There was an old woman from Phnom Penh who liked to canoe now and again, but boating Tonlé Sap -- despite compass and map -- she'd forget which way it flowed, now-and-then.
[Note: The Tonlé Sap is one of the few rivers in the world that changes its flow each year due to the rainy season surge. (As opposed to owing to daily tidal surges — which are more common.)]
There was a lovely lass from Vienna
who couldn’t attend balls without a duenna.
Men wooed like gangbusters,
but dad didn’t trust her.
So, her’s was the meanest duenna in Vienna.
There was a young woman from Zambia
who developed an instant phobia.
She’d suffered a trauma,
finding two Black Mamba
curled up in her corner of Zambia.
There was a bold florist from Vietnam
who was graced in great measure with aplomb.
There was nothing quite like
how she rode motorbikes
with eight thousand flowers, two kids, and her mom.
There was an old man from America,
an expert in weather esoterica,
“If you look out your window,
and you see a tornado,
there’s a great chance that you’re in America.”
*At 1,200 tornadoes per year, the United States is the undisputed champion of this weather phenomena. The #2 country — the adjacent nation of Canada — has more than an order of magnitude fewer tornadoes. (And most other countries with significant numbers of tornadoes are in the tens.)
There was an old lady from the U.K.
who ached when it was damp and gray,
but — between you and me —
she had a problem, you see,
’cause it was rarely any other way.
There was a man from the UAE
who cleaned windows for a small fee,
’til he got the urge
to work at the Burj.
Then his rates went up radically.
There was an old woman from Thailand
who lived on a teeny tiny island.
As she increased in age,
she was ever more engaged
in recalling which tiny island of Thailand.
There was a clever salesman from Sri Lanka
who tried to decide on a corporate lingua franca.
“Not Tamil,” Helas said…
“No Sinhala,” Tamil’s pled…
“English? – the tongue of imperial propaganda?”
There was a brown bear from Slovenia
who had a bad case of anemia.
While his kin were vegetarian,
he ate campers and carrion —
Hope you don’t meet the iron-shy bear of Slovenia.
