Three-year-old recites poem, “Litany” by Billy Collins (via Marina Berger) 

The Parrot-Ox

by Jane Ellen Glasser

The parrot-ox
is clearly confused,
as evidently
so were his parents.

Being both heavy and light,
he can neither
fly nor root,
which makes his life

a kind of hovering
between two things
that cross each other out.
All play is work,

all drudgery is sport,
and so he spends his days
busily doing nothing,
circling square

fields of thought
like a practical idealist.
At night he holds forth
in a neighborhood bar

in his undertaker’s suit
and Indian headdress.
He drinks to sober up
and tell again

the sad joke
of how we die at birth
into opposites.
And then he laughs

till he cries and cries
till he laughs,
sorrow and joy
mixing it up in his blood.