What if ovens,
When set to clean,
Drooled and oozed
A sight unseen?
And what if later
You came back to spy
On what came out
That was not very dry.
I smell something good!
Look, it’s a mouse!
No, it’s a mouse’s
Very own house!
Ten, little mushrooms
Standing in a row.
One on top of the other,
Standing, head to toe.
One, two, three,
Four, five six.
Seven, eight, nine,
Ten does the trick!
Now, what shall we do?
What will we say?
Mom never said, with
Mushrooms, we could play!
I’ll eat one
And you eat two!
I’ll put two more
Into my shoe!
That leaves five.
Will you eat one?
Then we’ll have four,
We’re almost done!
I don’t think this is
One of Mom’s wishes.
Four little mushrooms,
Without pretty dishes!
Here comes the cat!
She’ll eat a few!
Two are gone!
Now that leaves two!
I’ll put one in my pocket,
You can take the other.
But please, oh please
Don’t give it to your brother!
He’ll holler and scream
And cry like a baby!
Then we’ll have to figure out
How to make more, maybe!
Somehow or other,
This oven knows how
To make ten, standing mushrooms!
That’s truly, “WOW!!”
Let’s watch it again,
On some other day,
When we have no idea
What to do or to play!
When Mom cleans the oven
And leaves the house,
We can watch the oven drool
Mushroom houses for a mouse!
Precious Linda, c. 2014
I wrote this as an assignment
for my online, Beginning Writer’s Workshop, taken through ed2go.com. We were to
practice galumphing using three words as our prompt, randomly chosen from a pre-written list. I used the link to
[Seuss-erific] Q & A – by Bonnie Neubauer, with sample, No. 60, from her
book, Take Ten for Writers. You can see this, during the month of October 2014,
at: http://www.creativity-portal.com/articles/bonnie-neubauer/take-ten/seuss-questions.html
I chose three numbers
between 1 and 10, 7-6-3, and from the lists provided, I came up with the
question to answer as: “What if… ovens… drooled… mushrooms?” I wrote this poem,
with a few, small edits afterwards, galumphing with Dr. Seuss!
