Happy As Punch
Why just today there was slimy pink watermelon rind, carbuncled soft-seeping potatoes, hairy green oranges, glutinous globs of jellied lemons, squishy lumps of scabby strawberries, putrefying blackened carrots, fizzy festering piles of gelatinous apples alongside disintegrating gooey gobs of pumpkin rind, sticky stinky slabs of gummy cauliflower, mouldy mouldering balls of burbling blueberry muck mixed up with gurgling gunks of cabbage, rankling rancid raw celery, a mess of mucilaginous mildewed cherries, putrid leaking onion skins, repulsive bunches of squishy oozing grapes, slobbery-sticky pears and with all this I dare you to name one earthworm, rove beetle, featherwing beetle, centipede, earwig, flatworm, tiger worm, solider fly, fruit fly, fungus gnat, millipede, mite, mouldmite, nematode, rotifer, pot worm, protozoa, pseudoscorpion, springtail, spider, pillibug, slug, and loads of others who wouldn’t be happy as punch to live in such a fragrant heap of compost-fabulous, tasty, totally wondrous and awesomely odorous pile of deliciously rotting rottenness.
This poem is copyright (©) Zaro Weil 2024
About the Writer
Zaro Weil
Zaro has been a lot of things: dancer, theatre director, actress, poet, playwright, educator, quilt collector and historian, author, publisher and a few others. She has been collecting American quilts for more than twenty years and has exhibited her collection variously in London galleries. She has written on quilts for Vogue, Elle Decoration, Traditional Homes and Interiors as well as numerous newspapers. Her poetry for children has appeared in many anthologies. She has written several books including a book of children’s poetry, Mud, Moon and Me (Orchard Books, UK and Houghton Mifflin, USA), Firecrackers (Troika) illustrated by Jo Riddell and Cherry Moon (2020 CLiPPA Award Winner).
