You’ll Want to Read this Poem Aloud
The linens in the valley of the People of the Pebbles were a-drying in the wind upon a bright n’ sunny day,
When suddenly and utterly, a thrusty gust so blustery a-blew the linen sheets off linen lines and all away.
They blew into the trees upon the busybody breeze, and then they blew right through the houses of the People all around.
The puzzled Pebble People of the valley grew a-frightened as the fleeing sheets of linen flew across the dirty ground.
Pebble People live in such a funny situation that an explanation must be given just for you to see,
Being made of pebbles, all the Pebble People struggle when they wash their cloths and linens to be all stain-free.
For their joints are made of gravel and their skin is thinning sand and fanned under their hair of plant and craggy crabgrass root.
If you were made of dirt, you’d have an ever dirty shirt, and cleaning shirts and sheets would be your only task to boot.
So upon that windy day as all the linens blew astray and got a-dirty in the hay of all the farmers in town.
The Pebble People raced beneath the breezy sheets, seething to retrieve them all before they all could hit the dirty ground.
They ran through all the stop signs in the market and the mall and tried to climb upon the towers for a better high reach.
They grabbed their nets and grabber sticks to grab the linens and to fix the situation lest it all blow past the beach.
The beach, you see, was in high tide, and all the People People sighed to see their precious linens blowing out to sea.
The wind was strong. Before too long, the linens and the sheets were gone. Gone to the horizon where no one could see.
A crowded land, upon the sand, the sandy People stood to cry. Crying for each mattress that would be so bare.
The People wept. They once had slept, but sleep no more on sheets they kept. They cried about their fortune following this cruel affair.
Pebble People never got the feeling they were wanted by the Other People traveling throughout their little town.
“Rocks and stones. Not skin and bones!” the Other People shouted to the Pebble People. “You belong upon the ground!”
“We’re people. We’re not soil,” said the Pebble People, “and we’ll toil day and night to prove our worth to those blockheads.
For they say we belong to dirt, but we will earn our status certainly by lying not beneath their soles, but on our beds!”
Farewell to status and to beds! No sheets will lie under their heads. They’ve blown away along with all the Pebble People dreams.
They could not keep their linens clean. They could not keep them, s’what I mean. And all that work was lit’rally torn asunder at the seams.
The little valley cried all night before the coming morning light. They lay upon the ground like pebbled piles in tears.
But sunrise came upon the valley with the flapping of the wing. The Pebble People looked and laughed and gave three cheers!
Swoopin’ into view there flew a gaggle of the birds that were as glorious a cue as radiant fireworks,
And no, these were not geese. These were the bearers of the babies for the Pebble People. Yes, these were the Pebble Baby Storks.
And Pebble Babies hung below their beaks in happy laughter, and the Storks flew low to give the Pebble People all a peek.
For Pebble Babies cuddled softly in the linens that were lost. The linens and the sheets hung in the Pebble Storks’ beaks.
Now all is safe and happy in the valley of the People of the Pebbles for that problem is the last they’ll see.
Instead of hanging linens, they’ve acquired washer-dryers that within this stanza just began their cycle three.
