Brother Beaver

by Brendan Cavanagh

Tuesday Classic Brian writer Mada is notorious for initiating trendy blog posts. Well, just one I guess. Everyone is familiar with the innovative, knee-slapping first installment of Classic Brian's most famous phenomenon, Zombie Snowpocalypse. Then there was a kind-hearted, failed attempt at reviving the belly laughs incurred by her take on zombie survival, the inexplicable animation of every one of Springfield's statues. This week Mada used her Tuesday post to share with us Allen Ginsberg infamous epic poem evocative of the 50s / 60s Beat Movement, "Howl."

I imagine, despite the lack of her own personal input, Mada wanted us to focus on poems this week on Classic Brian, so I will ignore Eliot's thoughtful opinion piece and post a poem that has a feel of sentimentality when I read it. This is a poem my friend Griffin and I were assigned to co-write in our junior year American literature course, one that had to echo sentiments and themes residing in the literature produced in the Romantic or Transcendental movement. I can't really be sure which era exactly because the poem is so poorly manufactured that it lends no credence as to what period it evokes.

The poem is called "Brother Beaver," and it goes like this:

“Brother Beaver”

As I roved out one summer morning,

I witnessed quite a scene.

Brother Beaver building

In the middle of a stream.

“Brother Beaver,” said I,

“Dost thou know who has created thee?”

The busy beaver answered,

“Boy, do not question me.”               

He turned around quickly

And continued with his laborious task

Like a zealously scurrying ant.        

So again in autumn I did ask,

“Dost thou know who has created thee?”

Beaver was no less determined

In his line of work.

And He said to me, “Don’t ask me- I’m just vermin!”

I returned to the dam in winter

To once again make my plea.

An old, retired wise man, Beaver said,          

“The same divine Power who created you created me.”

I can only hope this trend of posting poems has a shelf life of longer than two installments. Go poetry!