Europa Poets' Gazette No. 74

Teach Me
I’ve just arrived: I’m alone, and new here.
Armed only with eyes and ears, and internet.
I’m trying to discover what I should fear,
to learn what’s a worry and what’s a good bet.
I’ve faced fears before and know what it takes,
but find myself in a panic and a dither
thinking of your Devils, wallabies and snakes
and all the other evils that bite, snap and slither.
I dread it will be reported that I almost died
somewhere among your eucalypts and pine,
bitten by a strange marsupial oddly
transmogrified
into overgrown rodent or revived thylacine.
But most I fear your Aussie love of rhyming verse
will nudge my Kiwi poetry from bad to worse.
© Tim Heath April 14, 2010