Your Sunday Poem

Fifty years ago, Don Marquis, a writer for the Evening Sun in New York, created a free-verse writing cockroach -- Archy -- who created his poetry on Marquis' typewriter late at night by leaping down head first onto he keys. Since it was too laborious to jump down on the shift key all the time, Archy wrote in lower case.  Archy had a friend, Mehitabel, "an alley cat of questionable character," and wrote poetry that was often mordantly critical about the human condition. My husband and I named our first cat Mehitabel, even though she was of sterling character.  Come to think of it, we also named our first car, a beat up VW van, Mehitabel, too.  

men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn