210. 210 Reasons to Write You This Letter

You may not believe I’ve got anything to say,
But I’ve 210 reasons to write you today:

For you see, in the first place, you’re a nephew of mine,
So could use a few words to make sure you’re fine,

And you’re given to dreaming of riding grey horses,
But I’ve got to start keeping you from riding off courses.

You eat lollipops like they were bubbles of air.
You wander your bedroom in search of a fair.

You spend every evening reading TV
And mornings on Sundays waiting to pee.

You arrange all your books into towers of cities
And when they fall down you search them for pities.

You once met a tiger for lunch at a zoo
And asked that the bill be made out to you.

You’re orgeous and eutious and given to smeuls.
You haven’t had reason to bury your tools.

You mother buys vinegar to add to your milk.
You father refuses to wear any silk.

Your brother’s suspicious and probably toils
Like sleepy-day spiders before evening boils.

Your dog smells like Jupiter, which isn’t too good,
And eats almost everything, even pieces of wood.

Outside in the daytime the world’s too bright,
But nighttime is too dark and causes you fright.


At the tip of each toe of your leftermost foot
Is a blister the size of the lesser Bigfoot.

You scream at the screens and admire the greens.
You’re lost in the scenes and never eat beans.

Your gait is determined by the will of the weather,
And you eat bowls of cereal with the tip of a feather.

My friend Davie Bean thinks maybe you fart,
But I say, if you do it, it’s as some kind of art.

I’ve heard that you sleep with a rubber baboon,
A slingshot, a boomerang, and stolen bassoon.

Your mother insists that you eat Apple Jacks
With gravy of turkey and honey-sweet wax.

Sometimes, in the morning, before you awake,
You dream of a falcon, a rose, and a snake.

You’re known to be rautious and ebrile and ool;
Your friends always complain that you never drool.

You waste all your crayons in vegetable soups
And make, every evening, such colorful poops.

Your mother makes orkons for each Thwibble’s Day,
And your father discourses on weevils and drays.

Your grandfather complains that your talent is wasted
On the painting of turkeys before they’ve been basted.

You save all your yennies and trickles and brimes
But never a twarter to rescue the mimes.

Your uncle, the middle one, insists ever formally
That you practice your hexes any way but normally.

(I’ve written but fifty of the reasons to write
and wonder if this note will come out alright.)

Your friends are bedroozled, gebursted, and borked
Without ever learning how they’ve come uncorked.

Your aunt in Bahrain keeps everything secret
As if Wikileaks hadn’t revealed every asset.

Your brother is powered by butter and jelly
And bounces about on your poor purple belly.

It seems you’ve become all pertubered by knaults
And cankertankated by neegles and prawlts.

Your divver is vivver, your sonjer is bonjer,
Your preepers have dreepered what you can’t conjure.

In times of diversion when you are all pooped,
Your friends hire villains to make sure your duped.

You run with the walrus, and rise with the nuns,
You single out neurons but excoriate huns.

You keep five little toads warm under your bed
Discovering later what you’d always dreaded.

Your uncle, the bald one, is bald on the head,
But so hairy elsewhere that he seems to be breaded.

(Oh, wait just a minute, oh, wait just right there,
You know I’m the uncle with problems with hair!)

Rumors abound that you’ve taken up golf
And are thinking of changing your name back Rolfe.

Your knees are like bees, your feet like a beet,
Your ankles just rankle, and you’re uncommonly fleet.

The piece of your nose that touches your face
Enhances your chances of winning a race.

The youngest of aunts that you have in your family
Is apt to make pizza and talk to you amiably.

In place of a house on the side of a hill,
You’d rather reside in a place called Brazil.

You’re beetled and bottled and bolted and blue
And arrange all your quadrants as if there were two.

Bedizened you dazzle, yclept you are surely,
The distaff isn’t you, and neither is surly.

Awash on a beach you could hide with the crabs
But never expect to subsist just on scabs.

Your tautologies are taut, as you’ve just been taught,
And your mind is so swift that it’s never been caught.

For your simple teleology you give no apology,
But instead must explain your own seismology.

You crush every cracker, and crack every cookie,
You read every fortune for you are no rookie.

(So far, I have given you one hundred reasons.
Will you read on or be guilty of unspeakable treasons?)

Intentions are good for the people you’ve met,
But you think they don’t know how best they should bet.

The sun on the Hudson is nothing you’ve seen
And never you’ve eaten a sweet xanthous bean.

Your cousins they number in the millions or billions,
But the grief that they give you is easily in trillions.

They say you are coy, unsated, and wrinkless,
But that you’d be better if thirstless and blinkless.

In times of confusion, you avoid every contusion,
So people request you in glorious profusion.

You tinkle and wink and blink like a pauper
But never have told your family a whopper.

You buckle, break, burst, and burn your bazooka
And find yourself left as a sorry palooka.

You agitate, cogitate, masticate food.
You extricate meat from your teeth with a spoon.

You ask about ostriches, curlews, and wrens,
And wonder why pigeons do not live in fens.

You auntie, the youngest, was nursing a bruise
And you came home anxious to tell us the news.

Your friends are complicit, explicit, or timid.
Their lies you describe as entirely vivid.

If you had an emu you’d feed it some gruel
Or amber or quinoa or some biofuel.

You expiate, dissipate, anticipate actions
And muffle or kill off all hostile factions.

Of colors, your favorite is chartreuse or puce,
And your favorite meat is dark chocolate moose.

You raise tiny scorpions to spice up your dishes
While asking your mother to grant all your wishes.

Entirely common are antlers and chandlers
Because your abode is run by panhandlers.

(The reasons I’ve shown number one hundred and fifty
But I’ll keep on going because it is nifty.)

If you could caboose or papoose or bamboozle,
You’d definitely be in charge of the ouzel.

Your mother eats cherries and berries and crumbs
And leaves you the food that sizzles or hums.

You decorate trees with orchids and androids
And sing Christmas songs as if lacking adenoids.

The sounds you enjoy are dribbles and sniffles
And mumbles and murmurs and all kinds of iffles.

Encased in a plastic embossed with your name
Are all of your pets of nefarious fame.

Your peeing is splendid, your pooping stupendous,
Your burps are so loud we call them tremendous.

In times of hysteria when all others are scared,
You calmly accomplish what no others had dared.

Your life is historic, caloric and doric
And your fame has become quite meteoric.

You uncle, the third, who is just the youngest
Is also the one who’s not at all lungest.

You drink only bottles of aerated water
Convincing your mother that she needs a daughter.

If given a chance, you would buy yourself myrtles,
Or eagles or bagels or seaworthy turtles.

You estimate height, weight, circumference, and shoe size,
But never explain the whos, wheres or whys.

Entranced by Columbus, you irrigate France,
Though Napoleon complains that he had no chance.

Your friends are named Norgid, Bertrude, and Sergrid,
But you call them by Salvo, Deliver, and Turgid.

Your wishes are washy, your tresses are dressy,
You wanted a brother, but not one so messy.

(I almost am done, only ten more to go,
I cannot remember why I didn’t say, “No.”)

Your friends say you’re lucky and plucky and fine,
But all I recall is you’re a nephew of mine.

If you were a king of a country called Bolder,
You’d wait to reseed it until you were older.

You’re never egregious or rancid or queasy,
And you never complain that anything’s easy.

And finally the reason that I must now write you
Is that you are the best you that’s ever been you.

So those are the reasons two hundred and ten
That I must now write you this note with my pen.

And now that I’m finished with my enumerations
And now that I’m done with these adumbrations

And now that I’ve listed every why and the wherefores
I cannot remember the so’s and the therefores

So I’ve nothing to tell you except what you know
About who you are and how you must grow.