Hello and welcome back to the daily poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Curran.

For today's poem, we're going to have a little bit of fun.

Not that these poems aren't generally fun, and I don't have fun reading them.

And not that you don't normally have fun listening to them.

But today's poem is for the kids. This is a poem called At the Zoo by A. A. Milne, who of course, you probably

know best as the author of Winnie the Pooh, which is full of us a great deal of poetry in and of

itself, and I think is one of the best aspects of it.

Mel knew how to craft a sentence. He knew how to put words together in a way that was exciting

and high energy and, I mean, just fun. That revealed the fun that language can offer.

I think that showing language as something that can be fun, and I don't mean

that in a trite way, but that can be full of life and vivacity. That is a great gift for children.

And I think that when we can reveal that to our children, in serious ways, as well as in the silly and fun

ways like today's poem, I think that we ought to do that as much as possible. So today is one of those silly and fun poems

that even as an adult I love reading this one. I think it's a great one to read aloud and I think

it's a great poem for kids to memorize. So here it is at the zoo by A.A. Milne. There are lions and

roaring tigers and enormous camels and things. There are bifalo, buffalo bisones, and a great

big bear with wings. There's a sort of tiny pottomis and a tiny nossorus, too. But I gave

bonds to the elephant when I went down to the zoo. There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers and a tiny noceros too. But I gave buns to the elephant when I went down to the zoo.

There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers and a superintendent's house.

There are masses of goats and a polar and different kinds of mouse.

And I think there's a sort of something which is called a wallaboo.

...