From the desk of The Unknown Poet this month comes another side of me.

I am not always serious in fact I can be, well a little off beat take this one for example. For any that know Joyce Kilmer's “Trees” in the same meter apply that to my updated version if he were to have written it today!

"The Tree"
By Donald Xander

The thing I loathe the most to see,
Is my neighbors cherry tree.
A tree that blossoms in the spring,
A tree that makes the birdies sing.

The tree that houses many birds,
Is subject to his neighbors words.
It's not the tree that we hate so,
More those that live within it though.

When in the summer of the year,
A ruby colored fruit appears.
Of which the birds all get their fill,
I hate those birds with yellow bill!

The birds they feast in pure delight,
Then up they soar in aimless flight.
For in the air they make their stand,
And defecate on cars and vans!

Pastels of blue and white look good,
But not on windows, nor on hoods.
Even pavements and front stoops,
Are full of little birdie poop!

The tree is home to all we loathe,
We're tired of wearing dirty clothes.
We told our neighbor - "Cut it down",
Those words fell on deaf ears we found.

We trained a dog that we call Boots,
To urinate upon it's roots.
A desperate move you must agree,
It multiplied the fruit by three!

A richer fruit we've never seen,
Adding colors black and green.
And things got so far out of hand,
We shot old Boots - best friend of man.

Alas my neighbor has left town,
I'm going to chop that damn tree down!
My friends agree it got so warm,
They'd blame it on a thunderstorm.