Category: Engineering, Maths, & Physics

Attacat

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Yeovil Pen Mill Cat & Signal Box by Tim Jones

Attacat

There is a cat who watches trains
And makes his home in signal boxes,
Lives beneath the weathered gables,
Catches rats who chew the cables.
Grey, he is, with smoky grains
That fleck his coat the way of foxes,
’Cept the tramlines down his back
Which earn his name of Clickerclack.
They shine out silver, brow to rump
They even bear the marks for sleepers –
Branded thus, his fate assured
His working for the Railways Board.
So where a plague of rodents clump
Within the homes of signal-keepers –
Unannounced by midnight freight
Comes Clickerclack to extirpate.
He bites, he claws, he chews in half
And shreds them into vermicelli –
Drives them out and leaves his scent
To fright them off resettlement.
And when his work is done, the staff
Will feed him fish and rub his belly.
Then it’s off to boxes new
Aboard the 07:22.

Unravelled

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assorted color button pin on brown surface
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

Unravelled

Seamstresses, it seems to me,
Have played us for a mug
In their wares we wear and buy –
The clothes in which we’re dressed
Are not so snug
In button, toggle, hook and eye,
When all can fall to pieces
Through a simple bug
In how they hem each cuff and fly:
It only takes a hanging thread
And gentle tug,
To show how lockstitch is a lie.

Daedalus to Icarus

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Icarus
Icarus by FlamingPrints

Daedalus to Icarus

Listen, son, you take these wings,
And fly !  You fly, because you can !
You fly for all your strength is worth,
Until all lands are in your span.
And you see all that I can’t see,
And never mind what gods may say –
You fly on up, towards the sun,
And maybe touch his face some day…
You fly, and you become a god !
For gods are made by what they know –
So you learn what the gods won’t say
And you take what the gods won’t show.
Just like Prometheus before,
And just like Newton yet to come,
You are the god the gods most fear
Who spreads the word and bangs the drum.
They claim the sun will melt your wings –
They scoff, until your dreams are heard
By star-struck brothers on a beach,
And giant leaps beyond the birds.
There’s many let their dread of hubris
Quench the spark that’s just begun –
But others leap with open wings
And dare to fly – so fly, my son !

Skywriting

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fisher pen
The Fisher Space Pen

Skywriting

Infact, they both used pencils
Up until Nineteen Sixty-Seven,
When a privately-researched pen was announced
And NASA and Cosmonauts quickly renounced
Those flammable, lead-shedding pencils –
Americans first, with Apollo 7.
They should be so proud, that commie space-guys
Are writing with Yankee-most free-enterprise.

A Pile of Babbage

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Difference Engine
The Difference Engine at the Science Museum

A Pile of Babbage

You built a Diff’rence Engine
Just to see if it would work,
Then locked it in a cabinet
And let it snooze and shirk.
In all of its magnificence,
It’s still in cog and joint.
You say it makes no diff’er’ence –
I say, that’s just my point !