For Charlotte
in memory of many charming worms
Contents
Book Worms
Don’t Poke a Worm
Hey Wiggle Wiggle
Sing a Song of Squiggling
What is a Worm?
Tweet Tweet, Blackbird
If I Could Choose
Wonderful Worms
Wormy, Wormy, Oh So Squirmy
Through a Window
Ark Anglers
Reliable, Pliable Worms
The Worm that Turned
Weeny Worm Wuffet
One Famous Worm
Another Famous Worm
Late Worm
Small Robin Horner
If Worms Were Wishes
News Item
Flexi-Worms
Vermicular Olympics
Elf and Safety
A Wriggly Dip
Everyday Worms
Racing Worms
A Nonsense Worm
Why Wrinkle Your Nose?
Charming Worms
Wiggle, Worm, Wiggle
Mixed Worms
Cat’s Trophy
A Close Call
The Worm who was Afraid of the Light
Squirmy Wormingham
The Wise Old Worm
A Prickly Task
Mary Had a Wiggly Worm
More Charming Worms
Mr Mole
Incey Wincey Wormy
Simple Squirmy
Hickory Dickory Dee
Wormy Warnings
More Wormy Warnings
Weather Worms
Worms on Ice
Worms in Winter
Dreams in a Drought
Two Little Worms
The Ghost Worm
Wee Willie Wormy
A Worm’s Prayer
Rock-a-bye Wormy
Book Worms
If this book wriggles
and squiggles and squirms,
that is because it’s a
book full of worms.
Curl up like a worm
and enjoy all the rhymes,
a hundred, a thousand,
a million times.
Don’t Poke a Worm
Don’t poke a worm till it wriggles.
Just joke with a worm till it jiggles
and breaks into chuckles,
goes bendy and buckles
and giggles and giggles and giggles.
Hey Wiggle Wiggle
Hey wiggle wiggle
The worm had a wriggle,
He squirmed right over the mole.
The little mole gaped
To see he’d escaped
And the worm wriggled into his hole.
Sing a Song of Squiggling
Sing a song of squiggling,
A garden full of worms,
Four and twenty sneezes
Cover them in germs.
When I dig the flower-bed
The worms begin to squirm,
Why am I allergic to
The humble garden worm?
What is a Worm?
A string with a wiggle
A rope with no knot
A ribbon with nothing to tie
A finger-sized soil-bag
A root with no pot
The gleam in a blackbird’s eye
Tweet Tweet, Blackbird
Tweet tweet, blackbird,
Have you any worms?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
My beak squirms:
One for the robin,
One for the thrush,
And one for the nightingale
That sings in the bush.
If I Could Choose
If I could choose what I might be
I’d like to be a worm.
And no-one would say ‘sit still’ to me
If I could choose what I might be.
I can’t sit still, you must agree:
I wriggle and I squirm.
If I could choose what I might be
Wonderful Worms
Anna Worm is acrobatic,
Bertie Worm is brave,
Charlie Worm is cheerful,
a daring worm is Dave.
Elspeth Worm is elegant,
Freddie Worm has fangs,
Gertie Worm is simply great,
Harvey Worm just hangs.
Ivy Worm’s inspiring,
Jasmine Worm, she jives,
Katy Worm is kindly,
Lucy Worm saves lives.
Mary Worm’s magnificent,
Nasreen Worm is neat,
Oliver Worm is odd at times,
a popular worm is Pete.
Quentin Worm is quiet and quick,
Richard Worm is wriggly,
Sanjit Worm’s surprising,
Tamsin Worm is tickly.
Ulrica Worm is upside down,
Vikram Worm is vexed,
William Worm is witty and wise,
a secretive worm is X.
Yolanda Worm likes yellow sand,
Zoe Worm has zest.
Ask any worm, “Are you wonderful?”
and all worms answer, “YES!”
Wormy, Wormy, Oh So Squirmy
Wormy, Wormy,
Oh so squirmy,
How do your segments coil?
Through eating clay
And sand each day
And forty sorts of soil.
Through a Window
One day a worm looked through a little window
and saw a starfish, far from sea or sand,
But the window was the glass of a jam jar,
and the starfish was a small boy’s hand.
Ark Anglers
Noah let his sons go fishing,
only on the strictest terms:
“Sit still, keep quiet and concentrate:
we’ve only got two worms!”
Reliable, Pliable Worms
Worms are dependable
stretchy and bendable
always extendable
never expendable
garden befriendable
completely commendable:
Give that worm a medal!
The Worm that Turned
O
here is
the
worm
that
turned
but
not
the other cheek,
this
worm
wrapped
himself
around
the
early bird’s
fat
beak.
Weeny Worm Wuffet
Weeny Worm Wuffet,
Squirmed on a tuffet,
Eating her soil and clay.
A hedgehog appeared
With a prickly beard
And frightened Worm Wuffet away.
One Famous Worm
My name is so famous that, maybe, you know it:
I’m William Wormsworth, a classical poet.
Another Famous Worm
Leonardo da Vormi, an Italian wormy,
could writhe his name backwards, the teaser!
One of the cleverest worms on earth,
he painted the Squirma Lisa.
Late Worm
When my worm snuffed it
somebody stuffed it:
Taxidermy
can be wormy.
Small Robin Horner
Small Robin Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his fresh worm-pie.
He stuck in his beak
And flew into next week
When a worm whipped him right in the eye
.
If Worms Were Wishes
If worms were wishes
I’d dig every day
and fill up a bucket
of worms on the way.
I’d pick up each one
and, worm after worm,
I’d make lots of wishes
to make people squirm:
For Tommy (who pushed me
and trod on my toes)
hanging out of his nose.
For Polly (who stuck out
her tongue at me earlier)
I’d wish her tongue longer,
and thinner and curlier.
But for Mum (who has loved me
since the day I was born)
I’d wish extra worms
in her lovely green lawn.
News Item
“The scientists know everything about me,”
said the worm, as it wove down one more hole,
And its five tiny hearts beat faster,
“But they still don’t know about my soul.”
Flexi-Worms
Twenty soily centimetres underneath the ground
flexi-worms are exercising, writhing round and round,
strengthening their muscles in gymnastic pursuits
as they wiggle-weave and zig-zag in between the roots.
Tiptoe on the grass, now – don’t make a sound;
mustn’t wake the worms up deep underground:
worn out with work-outs, they’re curling up to sleep
thirty dirty centimetres underneath our feet.
Sssshhhhh!
Vermicular* Olympics
Ploughed field events:
Long stretch
High stretch
100-segment wriggle
Squiggle, wiggle and curl
Pebble-put
Puddle events:
Back squirm
Saddle squirm
Caterpillar squirm
(*of worms)
Elf and Safety
If you’re a worm never visit the home
of a fairy, a pixie, an elf or a gnome.
They’ll ask you to stay, in fact, they’ll insist.
And how will they use you? Consider this list:
As …
a beetle’s lead – for walkies,
a skipping-worm – for play,
a worm to tie their hair up
if it’s getting in the way,
a guard-worm, in holly leaves,
or, laid out on the floor,
a living draught-excluder
shoved up against their door,
a worm that’s slung between two sticks
for washing to hang on – a worm in a fix!
Tied to a flower, a vertical worm,
for fairyfolk to climb –
so, worms, be wary of elf and fairy;
they’ll give you a very hard time!
A Wriggly Dip
Dip, dip, earthworm, in the sand,
Who’d like to hold you in their hand?
Wriggle little earthworm,
Wriggle-me-ree,
Will it be the next one?
No,
not
he!
Dip, dip, earthworm, in the sand,
Who’d like to hold you in their hand?
Wriggle little earthworm,
Wriggle-me-ree,
Will it be the next one?
Yes,
it’s
she!
Everyday Worms
rough
worms
tough worms
soft and
sentimental worms
funny
worms
sunny worms
cool, calm and
gentle
worms
worms in the garden
worms in
the park
worms in
the daytime
worms
after
dark
squiggling
wriggling
every
little squirm
just as
individual
as
every
tiny
worm
Racing Worms
Humble Worm and Slightly Soiled begin a squirmy race.
They’re heading for the compost heap for each to fill their face.
“Last one there’s a centipede!” cries Humble, with a grin.
“I’m the fastest worm there is,” says Slightly Soiled. “I’ll win!”
Humble Worm gets tangled in a labyrinth of roots.
Slightly Soiled surfaces and off the young worm shoots.
Yet wormly pride, the saying goes, comes before a rise:
A blackbird grabs poor Slightly Soiled and lifts him to the skies.
But Slightly Soiled knows stories of what fortune flattery brings;
He keeps his cool and tells the bird how beautifully he sings.
“Of course, I do sing wonderfully!” the foolish blackbird calls:
The plan succeeds – an open beak means Slightly Soiled falls.
This time he wriggles underleaf, quite safe, but not too deep,
And in no time at all he’s reached the garden compost heap.
A second later, who arrives, but Humble Worm: “I reckoned
I could beat you, Slightly Soiled, but now I see I’m second.”
The worms shake tails and wriggle in the compost for a feed.
“The race was close,” says Slightly Soiled, “and I must concede
That you squirmed pretty quickly for – ahem – a centipede!”
A Nonsense Worm
How many worms in a wriggle?
How many wriggles in a squirm?
How many squirms in a flower-bed
if you’ve only got one worm?
Why Wrinkle Your Nose?
Why wrinkle your nose at poor worms?
They’re good creatures, not horrible germs!
They’re the gardener’s friend,
Turning soil. In the end
Plants grow better because of their squirms.
Charming Worms
I don’t mean worms are charming
though, of course, they’re rather sweet
and if you’re a mole or a hedgehog
then you’ll find them good to eat –
no – to ‘charm’ worms is to tempt them
to come up – let me explain:
you encourage them to surface
when you make them think you’re rain.
The poor worms quickly panic
when they feel their ceilings shake,
so they’re up and in the sun before
they realise their mistake:
No rain to flood their tunnels!
No worms about to drown!
Just a human with a bucket
who is stamping up and down!
Wiggle, Worm, Wiggle
Worm wiggled under the weeds:
Wiggle, Worm, wiggle.
Worm wiggled back again.
Well wiggled, Worm.
Mixed Worms
The garden worm is homely,
he likes bedsock, book and tea.
The field worm is much bolder,
she plays wormball; learns to ski.
The mountain worm’s a cool one –
an amazing head for heights!
Woolly sheep and bracken
are among his chief delights.
The seaside worm builds castles
on every sandy shore,
with heaps of curly corridors
but never once a door.
The riverbank worm’s bravest,
she’s never heard of spud
or carrot, swede or turnip,
all she’s ever known is mud.
Worms are all so different
and yet so much the same!
Let’s all applaud the gentle worm,
salute
its squirmy name.
Cat’s Trophy
When cats go out hunting
they’ll bring in the house
a frog or a blackbird,
a shrew or a mouse.
When my cat was a kitten
he started out small
and caught a live earthworm
to brighten our hall.
A Close Call
When Hedgehog saw two worms in love
her appetite diminished.
The worms were tangled in a hug
and, when their cuddle finished,
the hedgehog said, “Keep calm, young worms,”
(the worms were looking frantic),
“I cannot eat two worms in love.
I’m just an old romantic.”
So if you spot two tangled worms,
locked in a strong embrace,
the chances are you’ll also see
a hedgehog’s gentle face.
The Worm who was Afraid of the Light
“I don’t like it out here on the surface,”
Said a worm to her mother one day.
“It’s far too bright. I’m afraid of the light.
Can I please burrow home now and play?”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” said her mother.
“I don’t like little worms that wail.
It’s a shame that you haven’t a house on your back;
You should have been born a snail.”
But that gave the worm an idea:
She dressed up in a snail’s old shell.
“Look, Mum,” called her echoey voice,
“I’m a snail. (But I don’t like the smell.)”
Now if you find a shell, listen carefully.
If you hear a small voice saying, “Pooh!”
Then you’ll know that there’s no snail inside it;
It is occupied by You Know Who!
Squirmy Wormingham
Squirmy Wormingham
Squirmed to Birmingham
In a shower of rain.
He went for a paddle