Category: Children

Carcassong

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meeplestars

Carcassong

Highwaymen are looting on the roads beneath the Pyranees,
As abbots tend their gardens in the misty Marin breeze,
While knights are walled in cities with their castles, shields and shrines,
And farmers lie in fields while the sunshine grows the vines.
And the River Aude is rolling down
From mountain pass to coastal town,
And from the peaks we see for miles
The chequerboard of tiles.

It turns out, the highwaymen in the opening line were all working for Lucky Hans, busy swiping other people’s property. However, I hear there is a growing resistance movement aiming to Free The Meeple !

Ovine Inspiration

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focus photo of brown sheep under blue sky
Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

Ovine Inspiration

Barbara Blacksheep bears a name
Belonging to a shepherdess,
A damsel in a dirndl dress.
But Barbara won’t play this game –
Whyever did her parents think
Her life should be a nod and wink ?

Barbara Blacksheep, twelve years old,
Is fighting hard against the path
Her name intends to telegraph.
Defiance, though, makes Barbara bold –
She won’t be traipsing downs and dales
From soggy Kent to chilly Wales !

For she’s a city girl at heart –
The only sheep she ever saw
Was supermarket mutton, raw.
She’d struggle how to play the part –
She couldn’t be a wannabo-Peep
For anyone, not even sheep.

She doubts all that nostalgia, though –
They weren’t romantic spirits, free,
But serfs a meal from poverty.
Yet things have changed since long ago –
The modern herders of the moors
Use phones and drones and four-by-fours.

But then she sees a painting in a book –
A shepherdess amongst the gorse
Just leaning on her crook –
Rather chocolate box, of course,
With unshod feet and peasant’s dress
But in her eyes a knowing look
That said here was a shepherdess
That knew her pasture’s ev’ry nook
And knew her ev’ry sheep by sight
And knew she’d get them home all right.

She was maybe fifteen, sixteen,
Not much older than Barbara now –
The latter who would struggle between
Telling a sheep from a cow
Yet somehow, if she’d only end her war
Upon her name,
Then give her three years, give her four,
To give herself an aim –
And could she be that confident of gaze
To watch them graze ?

And so she got to thinking deep
About her future, taking stock –
And made a choice to guard the flock.
So Barbara Blacksheep will never lack sleep
Counting ev’ry one of her charges
As each bleats and bustles and barges.

She made herself a solemn vow
To shield her yearlings from disasters
As playing fields become her pastures –
For she’s a playground monitor now –
Her lambs aren’t sheep and kids aren’t goats,
But tykes in woollen hats and coats.

Young Shepherdess Standing by William Bouguereau

Every Sunday

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photo of brown and white short coated beagle lying on a pillow
Photo by Dina Nasyrova on Pexels.com

Every Sunday

For ever since I can remember,
Sundays were the worst –
Growing up in villages,
We longed for them to burst,

With their uptight prim and properness,
And Sunday-Best remarks,
With nothing ever open
’Cept the churches and the parks.

We longed for the tension to flare up
In an all-out family war –
But of course, they never would,
They just went muttering as before.

Our parents either marches us off
To hymns and holy dread,
Or took a lazy breakfast,
With the Sunday papers spread.

Then out to visit relatives,
Or kicking round at home,
Or maybe made to wash the car
Or read some worthy tome.

It was a Blue Peter sort a day,
Vaguely seen as good for us
In that terribly wannabe middle-class way,
With an Archers omnibus.

Then come the evening, on the box,
Some cop show or a flick –
And sometimes there were arguments
On who would get to pick.

Even as kids, we felt the sense
Of desperation in it all
With families forced by ritual rest
To slow down to a crawl.

With Monday looming over,
And with homework to be done,
We clung on as long as we could, until
Early to bed, no more fun.

Ping-Pong

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a load of balls

Ping-Pong

Here’s a sing-song on playing ping-pong,
With a rat-a-tat-tat on the tic-tac-toe
With a whack and a smack and a snickersnack,
With a there and back to the come and go –
But the pitter-patter must clatter, I bet
When heard from the other side of the net.

Here’s a song-sing on playing pong-ping,
With a mi-re-doh to the swash and the swish,
With a tock-tick tock-tick clacker-click,
With a slow-slow-quick and a bosh-bash-bish,
With a fum-fo-fi-fee la-la-land –
But how does it sound if you play left-hand ?

Here’s a sing-ching on playing pong-pong
With a buckle-my-Schubert under par,
With a nee-nah nee-nah stick it up your jumper,
Baa-baa blast-off twinkle star,
With an eeney-meeny knees-and-toes –
But how does it sound if you’ve got no nose ?

Here’s a see-saw on Plato plink-plonk
With a yan-tan-tesseract mamma-me-and-you
With an all-for-one and a four-four-two,
A diddy-diddy-doo-da and lop-bop-be-doo
With an ella-menno-pee and a ringo-john-and-paul
But how does it sound from inside the ball ?

Here’s a *dok-dok* on playing *pat-a-pat*
With a *boing-boof-bok* and a *spit-spot-SPLAT*

Trees in Threes

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flight landscape nature sky
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Trees in Threes

        1.
Trees are nice and all,
But I feel I’ve already seen ‘em –
They’re big and fat and tall,
With not a conker between ‘em.
And they’re so brown,
So endless brown,
Except where the leaves have greened ‘em.

        2.
I’ve spied these trees before
On the other side of the woods –
They’re taunting me, I’m sure,
With their secret brotherhoods.
They move about at night, I swear –
For how else did those trees get there ?
But when I question them, they just ignore,
And won’t give up the goods.

        3.
Poplar black and willow white,
I think that I have got that right –
But easy to confuse them, each,
Like copper birch and silver beech.

Tick-Tock, Writer’s Block

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nursery rhymes

Tick-Tock, Writer’s Block

The ants are marching ten-by-ten,
Running through my brain,
Where nine little Indians
Are dancing for the rain,
With eight green bottles
That they’re trying hard to fill,
And seven for a secret
When Jack falls down the hill.
Six geese are laying,
Though they’ve nothing yet to show,
With no knick-knack or paddy-wack
Where five men went to mow.
This little piggy stayed at home,
When the hickory-clock struck four
But three in the bed, in my empty head,
Find counting such a bore.
So two chirping crickets
Are all that’s left behind,
As one lonely tumbleweed
Is blowing through my mind.

Twenty Seconds

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washing hands

Twenty Seconds

        1.
Eeny meeny, counted Queenie,
Fingers one two three and four –
A fish alive and thumb makes five,
And on the other hand there’s more.
So rub-a-dub and squeeze and scrub,
And this little piggie wee wee wee
Index middle ring and little,
Pinkie perky owe-you-tee.

        2.
Queenie went to market
To buy a bar of soap
She went to Deal and Margate,
And Cape Town on the Hope,
But a laundry-maid from Washington
Had bought up ev’ry crate,
So Queenie had to wash with none
But ashes from the grate.

        3.
Queenie on her lone and only,
All her friends are all indoors –
They’re down with spots and chicken pox,
And tummy-aches and sores.
Queenie finds the streets are empty,
Like the swings and slides and stores –
They cannot come and play today,
They’ve all been through the wars.

Coming of Age, Twice Over

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twins
Self Portrait by Auguste Vinchon, also showing his imaginary twin brother (the original is on the one on the left).

Coming of Age, Twice Over

When I was just your age, you twins,
I dreamed of heading West,
Of hitching rides between the inns
That stretch from hill to crest.
I planned to leave at earlybird –
And yet…I never did.
For on that very morn, I heard
Your ma was got with kid.

When I was just your age, you twins,
I almost saw the world.
I almost got to grin such grins…
Till word came from my girl.
I longed to sail the ocean blue,
To joust with sharks and squids –
And oh!, I would have made it, too,
But for you pesky kids !

My Leaping Friend

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29th

My Leaping Friend

The Twenty-Ninth came round today
It’s years since last she passed my way,
But on my birthday, there she was –
Alas, she couldn’t stay.
But that’s because that’s what she does –
She rarely comes to play.

I shrug, and try to not get sad –
For oh, when she does appear,
It always makes a special year,
Like an Olympiad.
It’s not a proper birthday, I might add,
When she’s not here.

The Extra Guest

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odin
Odin by Georg von Rosen

The Extra Guest

I don’t remember being told
About old Father Christmas –
He’s just someone I’ve always known.
Popping down the chimney
That we didn’t even have,
With a candy cane or xylophone.
It somehow seemed so rational,
To fly from Perth to Honolulu,
Via Cape Town and Cologne –
But strangest yet, I never even
Thought of how he was a stranger,
All the year alone.

So when my parents placed
An empty chair upto the turkey,
I assumed it was for him.
And when a neighbour came instead,
Or refugee, or homeless man –
I didn’t find it grim.
As long as he possessed a beard,
Then I believed in Father Christmas –
Even with a pseudonym.
He wore a diff’rent face, each year –
But so did Mother Goose,
And Peter Pan, and Tiny Tim.

For all the gifts he gave,
Did he ever get one in return,
From Moscow to the Amazon ?
Each year, I’d long to thank him,
But the meal would soon be over
And my moment never seized upon.
Yet in my mind, he’d wink, and say,
“Don’t worry, I already know.”
And then he would be gone.
We never get to give a gift to him,
But ev’ry year,
Instead we pay it forward, pass it on.