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A Small Collection of Limericks

Life Will Get You in the End:
Short Stories by David Satterlee

from the book: Life Will Get You in the End:
Short stories by David Satterlee

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My wife, Dianna, was teaching a unit on poetry to fifth-graders and thought that I should come and give them a talk on cinquains and limericks. I knew that I could do some real damage with limericks; but, cinquains? So, I started by looking up the word "cinquain." Boy, what a pro!

A Small Collection of Limericks

These were written for Mrs. Satterlee’s 5^th grade class as a contrast to the cinquains that they were studying.

I see you’ve a very nice playground
With swings and a ball field and go-round.
But I’d prefer recess
If someone could posses
A nice little puppy blue tick hound.

There once was a school in the mountains
That added some pretty new fountains.
They put in some fishes
And threw coins for wishes,
That they wouldn’t see any shark fins.

[This one was hard because mountains and fountains are the ONLY two “-ountain” words in English and I needed another one for the 5^th line. So, I settled for a one-syllable match with ‘-ins” and actually managed to make it humerous.]

I think I saw sharks in the fish pond;
A shark fin just flashed ‘neath a fern frond.
If I splashed in that place
I’d be gone with no trace
‘cept a yelp that just lasted a second.

There once was a Doctor named Clark
With hair that glowed red in the dark.
She’d even breath fire
If she found out a liar
And feed them to her captive shark.

[Okay, I think we got away with that one at the time. Dr. Clark was the authoritarian, red-headed principal. But she has moved on to other work and Mrs. Satterlee has retired and moved out of state, so I’m not even going to try for a rhyming pseudonym.]