Author: Toastingfork

Not afraid to rhyme.

Needle-Norths

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Some examples of mosaic compass roses from Paverart

Needle-Norths

Compasses never point to the Pole,
Not quite,
They have their own North Star –
It’s close enough to true, on the whole,
Despite it also being quite far,
Wandering through Canadian isles
To sway
The needles off the mark.
But then, True North can sometimes be miles away
From where the gridlines hark.

I recently came across an interesting theory put forward by Lance Weaver that true polar wandering had occurred during the last ice age, putting the top of the world firmly within Greenland, which might explain why Europe was covered in ice-sheets while Alaska was mostly ice-free. I have no idea if it’s correct, and would welcome a chance to read some counter-arguments, but everyone seems to be ignoring it.

Homonym

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Tick by Ryszard

Homonym

A tick is a bug that sucks up meaning,
A tiny check-mark on the skin
That no amount of language-cleaning
Will dislodge now it’s sunk its snout in.
A facial tic on our pristine tongue
Of too many meanings from a single noun –
Oh for a speech that’s regular and young
Before the parasites invade the town.
We use words on tick, to be paid for later,
Like the stuffing in a tick-case that is already frayed,
Or the ticks on a rule till the namesakes are greater
And we’ve spewed-out enough for a tickertape parade.
It ticks us off that such gaudy schlocks lurk,
But they’ve plagued us forever, syphoning their fraction –
Older than moments, older than clockwork,
The tick is as ancient as Anglo-Saxon.

‘Tick’ is also a Middle English word for goat (whose latter name is even older), and though thoroughly out-of-use can still be found in placenames such as Tickenhurst.

Incidentally, what does a twitcher call the first whinchat of the year ?  A tick tick.

Roofs

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Photo by Jeffrey Czum on Pexels.com

Roofs

Flat roofs belong to the Mediterranean,
Roofs for sun-decks, cheap to build,
For drying the laundry and gazing at stars,
Where the gutters have never spilled.
But Northern nations need their pitches,
Steep and tall and highly skilled.

Forget the tar, that won’t keep rain out,
That takes slate and tile and lead –
And don’t let snow accumulate,
It must be sheer enough to shed.
Maybe some dormers, maybe a Mansard,
Maybe even thatch instead.

But these days, and since the Georgians,
Fashions favour flat and low,
Yet walls get wet when eaves are dropped,
And the drainpipes overflow.
So ev’ry Winter spring the leaks
From rain with nowhere to go.

Northlingars

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Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

Northlingars

Ravens are birds of the North –
From Greenland to Mexico,
Skye to Morocco,
In India, China, and Asia Minor –
Above the equator, but never below.
Bird of the forest and bird of the desert,
Of mountains and towers, Kamchatka to Fargo –
Bird of mythology, bird of the present,
From Draco to Leo, but not on the Argo.
Perhaps, like the sailors of old,
They fly by the Pole Star, second-to-none –
Or maybe they just like the cold,
Their feathers too black for the tropical Sun.

This poem is about the Common Raven Corvus corax, as opposed to their siblings like the Australian Raven.

Knot

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Chimera by Todd Davis

Knot

Take the ends and pass them
Left over right,
Then under, round, and through,
And pull them tight,
And friction does the rest
Between the coils, between the strands,
And even between the fibres –
Like a thousand tiny hands
That hold us back
And stop the world from unravelling.
Sometimes it feels like we’re held in place
By nothing but well-bound string.

Crystal

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A selection from Pluto’s Jewelry

Crystal

Her ring finger bore a feldspar,
And her next a polished flint,
Her index bore the starry glint
Of mica or calcite – whichever is bright.
Her other hand was nothing but quartz –
Citrine, rose and amethyst.
While silicon zircons circled her wrist.
She said she liked them because they were like her,
Mirroring their wearer,
Displaying her worth –
Common, yet polished into something rarer,
As cheap as dirt, yet the salt of the Earth.

A zircon is not the same as a cubic zirconium – the latter is zirconium dioxide (ZrO2), whereas the indestructible mineral is zirconium silicate (ZrSiO4).

The Opiate of the Masses

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Photo by aakash gupta on Pexels.com

The Opiate of the Masses

Poppies on dresses, poppies on golf-clubs,
Poppies on penny-for-the-guys,
Poppies on the grills of Beamers and V-Dubs,
Poppies on Mowbury pies.
Round-up refuseniks, I hate the lot,
Let’s paint poppies on their doors –
For the poppy is the sign of the patriot,
And mine is bigger than yours.

First Chill of Autumn

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

First Chill of Autumn

It isn’t a frost – don’t fret,
But it is a cold morning –
Notice is given, we’d better take care,
It’s merely the first of the nips in the air.
It isn’t a frost – not yet,
But it is a fair warning –
It won’t come tomorrow or next week, it’s stating,
But Autumn is old, and the Winter is waiting.

Daylight Austerity

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Daylight Austerity

The clocks have changed, the dark has grown,
The evenings have started early –
Even as I leave the office,
Day has gone and night is surly.
Gloomy hordes of wrapped-up figures
Cram onto my flood-lit train –
It’s come at once, this blackening,
As Winter leaps out once again.
Trudging home from the lonely station,
Beneath the unexpected stars
That just last week were veiled in dusk –
Orion’s back, and is that Mars ?
It’ll only last a few days, this,
Till early nights are nothing strange –
It’s just the sudden shift, that’s all,
When dark has grown and clocks have changed.