The Earlier and Later Adventures of Willy Wart

The Earlier and Later Adventures of Willy Wart

( Author’s Note: This is a sequel to my earlier work, Willy Wart Wandered W Way, which I posted beforehand for the perusal of fellow blog folk. It is not necessary, however, to read the first work to understand this one. Indeed, you do not need to understand or read either of them.  The reader, as always, has his or her own requirements and options, which are as essential to them as a hump to a camel or a beak to a pelican. )

Willy Wart wandered Wrinkle Wood,
cold, raw as a rook’s caw.
Wind tangled hair without a hood,
wondered why was there for.

The farmer down in Donkey Dale,
red faced as an autumn gale,
said Willy Wart belonged in jail,
boiled up, like a kettle on a stove,
made a right rural fuss,
chased him with a big black blunderbuss.

Signs saying: No Trespassers Allowed,
Willy Wart never understood,
when he walked in Wrinkle Wood.
If trees and berries could grow free,
then, he reasoned, why not he?
When Gregory Lunk, gammy gamekeeper,
threw a black sack, like a thunder cloud,
to make him fall and scuff his knee,
as he legged it home to have his tea,
back in Windflower Cottage, like a crow,
he flapped in the door,
too hastily to be slow,
felt like a manky mariner,
glad to tread the sea’s shelly shore.

Willy Wart walked into the kitchen,
cold as the caw of a rook,
unwanted as a hole in a sock.
“Why are you late and so pale?”
asked Wendy Wart, his mother.
“And why do you look so shivery,
so shaken, as if you had had a shock?”
“I nearly got run over by a steamroller,”
answered Willy Wart,
with a face too sad to mock.
“A steamroller, no,
a steamroller rolls too slow.
No one ever got run over
by a steamroller, no,”
said his mother,
looking at her steamy apple pie.
“Don’t believe me then,” said Willy Wart,
with his black damson eye.
“I believe the lad,” said Wilfred Wart,
his father, when he came home from work.
“I have always said that Willy Wart
is truthful, like a Turk,
though that to me sounds awful queer,
especially as there are no roads round here.”
“Thanks, dad, ” said Willy Wart,
weary now of his downcast way,
and as he climbed the wooden stairs,
he heard his mother say:
“What is it, Willy Wart,
what is it you want to know?
Will it all come to naught,
what you planted, will it grow?
O, what is it, what is it, Willy Wart?”

Now Willy Wart had read in a book,
so he knew he was not mistook,
that of all the vehicles on the go,
the steamroller was first at moving slow.
And in his dream in his bed,
he left the way of W,
and entered the way of Y instead,
and became Yann Ying Yung,
yet young yearling yoked youngster,
yodelled yonder yore, yelled yeasty yearly,
until he entered the way of Z,
and became Zed Zero Zebra,
zenith zeolite, zapped zany Zanzibar,
zed zealot, zedoary zebu,
zinc Zodiac, zoo zone,
zipp zigzagged back into bed,
happy to be back in way of W,
as he wondered where the way of X fled.