sardine limerick

Belfast native Douglas Brown has sent this sardine requiem, and more...

Requiem for the Maine Sardine

Maine's herring once swam by the trillion,
But the meek of our race are six billion.
So many, we've eaten,
they're pretty well beaten.
Now it's hard to find half a million.

The herring got little respect.
It was scorned by the social elect.
The Hollywood star
just adored caviar,
but a can of sardines, she'd reject.

Those born to imperial bearing
were seldom consumers of herring.
It seemed kings and queens
rarely noshed on sardines
(at least, when their crowns, they were wearing).

The homely lobster is able
to grace the millionaire's table
but sardines were favored,
(with mustard well savored)
by the man who cleaned his stable.

On his yacht, the great Wall Street banker,
for filet of sole, sure did hanker;
but his cook and skipper
would divvy up kippers
with the sailor who heaved the anchor.

The Beverly Hills plastic surgeon
devoured platters of sturgeon;
while low-ranked clinicians
and health care technicians
downed kippers, without any urgin'.

The lawyer who drove a new Caddy
and dined on poached finnan haddie,
was also unerring
at shunning the herring,
but they were enjoyed by his caddie.

While the Texas oilman grew fat
eating barbecued "channel cat"
the roughnecks were sharing
Blue Ribbon and herring
and feeding sardines to the cat.

Maine sardines, it has come to pass,
though spurned by the very top brass;
were loved without question,
and doomed to digestion,
by humankind's lowlier class.


A Famous Mount Desert Summer Resident's View On Sardines

They say Martha Stewart's unsparing
in her disdain of the herring;
though she ate, in her cell,
canned sardines for that spell,
when prison clothes, she was wearing.

Douglas Brown