Botanist

I have been experimenting with a vernacular meter known commenly as hip-hop or American rap. This has been quite popular amoung the young people lately, and I thought I would give it a go:

I’m a botanist baby, I got what you need,
You got the plant I got the I.D.
Just give me a manual, a backpack and hand lens,
I’ll make a sammich and head out to Penny’s Bend
I get bit by a copperhead but I just don’t care,
Echinacea laevigata is out here somewhere.
What was that noise? A white-eyed vireo?
Sounded like a wood thrush, what the hell, I don’t know.
You want an ornithologist? That’s a different kind of man.
A bird watcher can’t give you all the things that I can.
I’m better than a rock hound or the guy that runs the zoo,
They don’t know what I know, they can’t do what I do.
I can take apart a flower and show you what’s in it
And teach you all the parts, just give me twenty minutes.
This here’s a corolla, here you got a sepal,
Now your gaining knowledge, more than other people.
My mind is like a library, bigger than the Vaticans
Don’t touch that baby –toxicodendron radicans.
You need a botanist so you can live the dream.
I’ll take you to the woods, down to a little stream
And show you trilliums, jewel weed and hellebores
Gooseneck loosestrife, cypress and sycamores.
I’m a botanist baby, and I got what you need.
You got the plant I got the I.D.