HE COULD EVEN HEAR A WEEPING WILLOW WEEP (22)

FUNNY BUNNY

Once upon a summer time there lived a little bunny

Who had his private cupboard in a garden nice and sunny.

His ears were most enormous-long, and with those funny ears

He heard all sorts of tiny sounds no other bunny hears.

For instance, if a little leaf fell softly from its branch,

He'd flinch and twitch his nose and say:  "Must be an avalanche!”

Why, he could even hear a distant weeping willow weep—

And shadows made so loud a noise that he could hardly sleep!

"What's that?" he asked himself one day.  He'd heard a curious sound,

And nearly leaping from his skin, the rabbit looked around.

What did he see?  He saw a moving dust-and-sunbeam stair—

A sort of escalator which was climbing up the air.

Only Funny Bunny with his super-conscious ears

Could have heard the weeny whisper of the escalator's gears.

Excitement tweaked his cotton tail and twitched his nervous nose.

"Hmmm!" he thought, "I wonder where that sunny stairway goes?"

Hopping on the moving stair, he mounted far and high,

And leaving tree and spire behind, he soon was in the sky.

"Well, look who's here!" the Moon-Man cried, a twinkle in his tone,

"Hey!  Stop awhile and talk to me.  I'm very much alone!

                                                                                               Leo Harrington

You're welcome to my garden.  Help yourself to all you see.

It isn't every day a rabbit comes to visit me!"

Gratefully the bunny tried the Moon-Man's garden bed

Where many, many edibles were temptingly outspread.

But when he nibbled eagerly at carrots, beans, and peas,

He found them flavored all the same.  They tasted like green cheese!

(The moon's a fine place for a mouse but never for a rabbit,

Since eating cheese of any kind is not a rabbit habit.)

Hastily he hopped again upon the moving stair,

And coming to a star, jumped off to see what might be there;

But stars, he found, have little food to please a hungry hare.

"Oh dear!" he whimpered wretchedly.  "I miss my dad and mom!

I wish that I was back again just where I started from!"

             A wish upon a star comes true.  I'm sure we've all heard that.

Well, he was on a star all right!  And so as quick as scat,
He found himself on earth again.  I'm happy this is so—
Though just how all this happened, I'm not smart enough to know.