The Tale of Little Reginald, Who Trusted in De Minimis

Young Reginald, a clever lad,
Would giggle when he’d done the bad.
“A speck! A mote! A nothingness!
The Law will say de minimis.”

He pinched a penny from his nurse,
Then two, then three — and something worse.
Each theft was small, each trick was slight,
Too tiny for the Law to smite.

Encouraged by his lucky streak,
He schemed and plotted every week.
“A crumb,” he cried, “cannot offend!
The Law won’t care — it’s just pretend!”

But crumbs, when gathered in a heap,
Grow mountains vast and valleys deep.
And when at last he’d piled his store,
The magistrate slammed shut the door.

“De minimis,” the Judge intoned,
“Excuses trifles, not a throne.
You thought your nibbles went unseen,
But theft amassed is theft obscene.”

So Reginald, with foolish grin,
Was carted off to dwell within
A cell of stone, and there he sat,
Reflecting grimly upon that.

---

Moral:
Trifles tolerated become
A reckoning too troublesome.

The Lament of the Horta

In caverns deep, where molten rivers creep,
And starlight never pierced the stony womb,
A mother stirred from her eternal sleep,
To guard her brood within that fiery tomb.

The miners came with flame and thunder’s roar,
Their drills like demons biting into stone;
They broke the halls where ancient spirits soar,
And left her kindred scattered, crushed, alone.

She moved — a shadow writ in molten fire,
A crawling grief that seared the trembling ground;
Yet still within her burned a pure desire,
To keep her children safe, unmaimed, unbound.

Spock’s mind reached forth — a bridge of thought and pain,
Where sorrow’s voice was neither beast nor lie;
He touched her grief, and felt the crimson rain,
Of countless deaths beneath a stranger’s sky.

And Kirk, with wisdom tempered in the flame,
Saw life where once he only saw the foe;
He named her not a terror, not a shame,
But kindred spirit, suffering below.

So learn, ye wanderers through the starry dark,
That life wears shapes no mortal thought may bind;
And often where we fear a beastly mark,
There beats the heart of something true, and kind.

ref:
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/26.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_Dark

The Tale of Doctor Eben

There was a learned Doctor, see,
Who cut up brains most carefully;
He probed and peered, with knife and chart,
And swore the soul was but a part.

But lo! One day he fell asleep—
A coma long, and dark, and deep.
The surgeons gathered round his bed,
And muttered, “Soon the man is dead.”

Yet while his flesh lay slack and cold,
His spirit strode through gates of gold!
It met with Love (enormous, kind),
A truth that baffled human mind.

He came again to tell the tale:
That science may, at times, grow pale;
That life is larger than its laws,
And Love’s the root of all because.

So children, mark this moral true:
The cleverest know not all they do.
For wisdom lives where wonder stays,
Beyond the reach of scalpel’s gaze.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Alexander_(author)

The Poet Who Failed

There once was a fellow, a fumbly young man,
Who flunked every test since his school days began.
He loved words that twisted, he loved rhymes that curled,
But exams always crushed him, oh what a cruel world!

He scribbled and scrawbled, he tapped and he tapped,
But grammar grew tangled, his spelling was zapped.
The teachers all frowned and they scribbled in red,
“His essays are muddles, his poems half-dead!”

Then one rainy day with a zap and a zine,
He stumbled upon a most marvelous machine.
It shimmered and shuddered, it whizzed with a light,
And promised, “Your poems will sparkle! Just write!”

So he pressed all the buttons, he pulled every knob,
And words poured out grandly—by golly, by gob!
Like laureates lofty with wisdom so wide,
He rode on the shoulders where giants reside.

But deep in his tummy a grumble grew loud,
“I’m cheating!” he muttered, “I trick the whole crowd!
These words are not mine, though I love how they sing,
I’m perched on tall shoulders, not growing my wing.”

Still he chuckled and juggled the lines as they came,
Delighting in rhythm, in rhyme, and in fame.
For even a fraud (with a wink and a grin)
Can stumble on magic—and learn from within.

So if you should meet him, don’t scoff or complain,
For the joy of his poems still dances, remains.
And perhaps, just perhaps, with his magical art,
He’ll learn that true poems must bloom from the heart.