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The Peerless Drongo

Published at 20:11:00-0800
Tags: poetry, drongo

While traveling on the group tour which inspired "A Gift for Gadi", a friend and I spent a day stumbling around a foreign marketplace, our bellies stuffed and our eyes wide. We were totally out of place -- yet we were at ease. I invented a word to describe the feeling of wandering aimlessly without a care: "roaming around like a couple of drongos."

The word "drongo" doesn't have a pithy definition, but this poem (and its companion, "Drongo Explained") should help you get the idea. A hedonist, a bon vivant, a fish out of water, an artist, a scrounger, a drifter, or a jester might all be drongos.

He's cheerfully strolling
Devoid-of-all-goaling
Gracelessly fearless, our witless fellow

Down the street ambling
Unhurried rambling
To none beholden, the peerless drongo!

Pausing to peer as the
Ladies draw near is he
Finding no shame in production of drool

With lust for the stocking
The drongo comes knocking
No need of motley has this kind of fool

Wanton debauchery
Lewd side-eye watchery
'Round the whole world in his bumbling flow

Snorting and snootling
Fecklessly frootling
To none beholden, the peerless drongo!

Cheapest of epicures
Drinker of every beer's
Last golden drops in the bottle at hand

Market stall prowlery
Flavor night-owlery
Led by his stomach all over the land

Faced with this nobody
Go with the flow, buddy
When you come near him you're certain to know

Share what you have today
Soon he'll be on his way
To none beholden, the peerless drongo!

[I am aware that not all speakers of English pronounce "epicure" /'ɛpɪkiɹ/, rhyming with "beer" /'biɹ/, as I have rhymed them here.]