Martin Elster

Millipede Cheevy
 
Millipede Cheevy, child of soil,
   grew sad reflecting on the reasons
grass is plastic. No more toil
   through summer seasons. 

Millipede loved the days of grass
   when all her thousand feet together
drove her forward through a mass
   of sod so nether. 

Millipede sighed for bygone rot
   and scorned this artificial meadow.
“Astroturf gets way too hot!”
   she cried falsetto.

Millipede Cheevy thought, “Vacate
   this galling eyesore they’re installing!”
Millipede carped and kvetched, irate,
   and kept on crawling.

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the
Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Martin’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. His honors include First Place in the
Traditional Sonnet category of the 2022 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest,
Rhymezone’s poetry contest (2016) co-winner, the Thomas Gray Anniversary Poetry competition (2014) Winner, the science Fiction Poetry Associations poetry contest
(2015) third place, four Pushcart nominations, and a Best of the Net nomination. A full- length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019.