The world has been too much with me recently so I tracked down an old post urging us to buck up. It’s a poem in which my father channels Dr. Seuss. I posted the poem originally on January 3, 2011 but it disappeared from this blog’s archives. So here it is again.
Dr. Seuss’ special mixture of comedy and earnestness had a big influence on my father’s light verse. This homage takes on special significance now that my father himself has died. Scott Bates died without uttering any last words, but he loved Seuss’s dying observation so I imagine him delivering it.
If you know the works of the noted children’s book author, see how many of the references you can catch. If you aren’t familiar with them, just surrender to his distinctive use of language.
In the Cosmic Caboose of Dr. Seuss
By Scott Bates
“We can do better than this.” –Last words of Dr. Seuss (1904-1991)
Dr. Theodor Seuss
Used to play fast and loose
With the deadliest, dullest reality–
Oh, the places he went! Oh, the things he did see!
Like the gol-darndest zoo
Of young Gerald McGrew
And Horton the Incredible Elephant, too,
Who rescued the Egg and the World of the Who;
–Or the lands of those kooks
The Yooks and the Zooks
With their bomb called A BITSY BIG-BOY BOOMEROO
That was going to blow us to Sala-ma-goo
All because of a Wall
And no notion at all
That a person’s a person no matter how small!
–PLUS the fabulous sights we were likely to meet
On the way home from school on Mulberry Street,
Not to mention the Whacks
Of the Truffula Axe
On the smogulous Street of the Lifted Lorax!
–Give the Doctor a cat, he’d give him a hat,
A wopsical hat! Would he settle for that?
Would he settle for one?
Or for two, three or four?
No! Not Dr. Seuss! Not even a score!
Take Bartholomew Cubbins. The hats that he wore
They numbered five hundred, not a single hat more.
And when he was done,
The very last one
The five hundredth hat
Was a wonderful thing,
A throbulous bibulous oblifferous thing
That Bartholomew Cubbins could sell to a king!
–And when, at the end, Dr. Theodor Seuss
Went riding with Thidwick the Big-hearted Moose
On his Cosmic Express, in his Big Red Caboose,
And they came to the home of the Grumbling Grinch
On the top of the cliff called Calamitous Clinch.
In the Proverbial,
Penultimate,
Precipitous
Pinch,
Did Dr. Seuss falter?
Did he flee?
Did he flinch?
Did he say, “What’s the use?”
No! Not Dr. Geisel! No! Not Dr. Seuss!
On the ultimate inch of the last precipice
He just said,
“We can do better than this.”
And we can! With Horton and Thidwick the Moose
And the Grinch and the Lorax and Cindy Lou Who
And Dr. Seuss, too, in the Great Seuss Caboose,
We can go beyond Zebra,
Beyond Sala-ma-goo—
And the Valley of Vung and the Solla Sollew—
Beyond even the BITSY BIG-BOY BOOMEROO!
At the ultimate edge of the Boom Band Abyss—
On the corner where Mulberry Street meets Bliss—
We can certainly do much better than this!
