The Wild and Hairy Aliens

by Richard Stoltzfoos

The wild and hairy aliens with crescents lifted high
Rushed at us from their saucers parked beneath the charcoal sky,
And we the humans, white as chalk, with voices just as dry,
Watched the oncoming life forms and sat down to trim our nails.

“There can’t be things like aliens within the universe!”
It was a fundamentalist. Then Grandma, just as terse,
Said, “I thought they were going to look more skinny and much worse.”
(The aliens politely paused their charge as we discussed.)

Below a sky of slate they stood, Neanderthals from space,
With lime-green saucers fashioned in some spaceship-building race,
Their sickles looking sharp as mint and somehow out of place,
Til some bard strummed his lyre and they began to jump about.

The cadre of us humans stood perplexed as pigs, and puzzled
About soteriology till we were all befuzzled,
And many tree-rings later got our discontentment muzzled,
Picked up our muzzleloaders and got ready for the charge.

And out they came from tents and from their lodges made of logs,
And rushed on us with vigor like a hail of hairy frogs;
We fought them from the beaches and the Turkish peanut bogs,
With halberd blades and AK-47s and nail clippers.

And O the air was dark and sweet and thick as cold molasses,
And O the lamps were lit upon the marshy boggy grasses,
And up the trees and down we fought upon the soft morasses,
And several fellows lost their lives, and many lost their glasses.

Beneath a tree of sassafras we finally made a pact
That none should be responsible for how he chose to act,
And alien and man would help with what the other lacked,
And both our leaders solemnly exchanged a jug of milk.

In victory we drank the milk below the damp wet trees,
And toasted one another’s health in fluent alien-ese,
‘Twas thus that non-terrestrials brought all Turkey to its knees,
And many rings since then have grown upon the cypress tree.

Richard Stoltzfoos is the son of Adin,
son of Wilmer,
son of Elam,
son of Moses,
son of Samuel,
son of John,
son of Christian,
son of Nicholas Stoltzfus,
who in the year 1766 emigrated from Europe,
being born of Christian Gottlieb Stoltzfus,
of the Saxon line of that name
which began in the year of our Lord 400,
by the provision of God, in German Saxony.

Photography by Kenneth Godoy