to the fore, no dilly dallying,
no words wasting,
I don't write nursery rhymes,
just relay tales re the peoples
I have met journeying on this
natural good earth
I know, I have met,
Little Bo-Peep,
no fiction she,
she has counted my sheep and I,
hers
she pins and pylons,
her tales on my heart,
beetles, bugs and little boys,
crumbs in the bed,
no bleeding hearts here,
maybe a bandaid
on a boo-boo'd finger
this shepherdess tends her flock
and records their history,
the little foibles that make
life's little tantrums into loving poetry
when I think of her escapades,
I recall well that old Yiddish proverb:
God could not be everywhere,
so he created mothers...
and when not tending her babes,
she can bake one hell of a good word cake,
on her island~continent kingdom
Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And can't tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, and they'll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep,
And dreamt she heard them bleating;
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were still all fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook,
Determined for to find them;
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they'd left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo-Peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails, side by side,
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks she raced;
And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,
That each tail be properly placed.
Source: The Dorling Kindersley Book of Nursery Rhymes (2000)