Legend Of The Hodag, Creature Of The Night (Rondelet) Poem by Mary Naylor

In the black night,
Fangs gleam below deep, cold, dead, eyes.
In the black night,
Huge lizard in shadowy light.
It rose from where the ox's grave lies.
Joke? Yet, the legend never dies,
In the black night.

Wisconsin, where I grew up, is rich in imaginative, humorous, and sometimes
scary, folk tales and literature. I was surprised to learn the Hodag was
supposed to have risen from the burning bones of Babe, Paul Bunyan's blue
ox.