"Mud", by Pahnna

Mud is such a basic word.
Like "dirt" or "it" or "cat."
Don't get me wrong, these words have their place
in mundane and idle chit-chat.
It is fine if this is all the verbosity
within your easy reach.
But we scholarly Grooks prefer
more specific speech.

Much better to traipse through saturated sediment,
and feel it squish and squelch between one's webbed toes.
It might be fine to use simple words, I suppose
But why call it mud, when you can call it muck?
And slide down a hillside though slippery sludge?

When the swamp is your home
and daily through slime and grime you roam,
you learn a more precise sort of language,
like those residing far in the north
who have a hundred different words for "snow," so I'm told.

Lest you think this sounds like snobbery,
be assured that this isn't the case.
For if as a froggy young child you had played a game of chase
through the mildewy marshes of Ulangi,
hide and seek in the murky miasma
hovering in the boggy foggy air,
then you too might have learnt
the language of my amphibious race.

Alas, for those who choose the plain old mud,
I wish you contentment.
A cow chews over and over the same old cud,
complacently,
because that it all she knows.
But as for me, I'd get too bored of the simple mud.
I'll choose to feel the gurgling goop,
the squelching slime,
the magnificent muck
and glorious gunk,
oozing between my froggy toes.