Mary Meover’s Menace

Mary Meover
Is standing in clover
Her husband
Is standing in rye
Her children
Are standing down by the lake
Trying to make themselves dry.

Mary has told them
Just what they should do
When into the water
They dive
“Keep track of your cloths,”
She says with a grin,
“and be home at a quarter past five.”

“For lurking in weeds
As high as your knees
Is a menace
So fearful and strange
That the strongest of men
Will shiver with fright
And heroes to cowards will change.

“Some say it’s as large
As a house that’s on wheels,
Some say it’s as small
As a flea,
But those who have seen it
Down by the lake
Of one thing they all will agree.”

“That if to your mother
You do not heed
When at home
She bids you arrive,
The menace, that lives,
In the weeds, by the lake,
Will visit at quarter past five.”

1981