I often get platitude and platypus
confused…you know mentally
transposed, intercourse,
right side, left side, flip flopped.
It comes with age….
a view of things differently,
through the lens of experiences,
mental molding, mind melding with life.
Someone offers a platitude,
an outright complement,
a nudge toward believing in ones self.
Accept it graciously, smile, nod the noggin.
But then there is the platypus,
a backhanded complement,
a comment resembling a marsupial,
a cute, furry web footed
aquatic creature with a duck beak,
and…a poisonous spur in its hind foot.
What a preposterous abomination!
Do not pick it up,
look at it,
walk around it,
watch it swim off into the oblivion
of ill intentioned banter.
Move on from the stagnate water
in which it swims, procreates, burrows.
After all, it is from down under!
Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour
Donald Harbour Poetry 