When I was nine, they told me, I would marry, Some day, long away. I wondered who she’d be, Whom I would marry – Would I get a say ? I knew I’d have to wait, And so I waited – But was led astray. I thought my future fate Was overrated – I would rather play.
When I was seventeen, I learned That I could marry There and then. I was of age, the right was earned, To marry Sue or Imogen. Not that I knew of Sue, Or Jane, or Kate, Or any girl like that – I had exams to do, They’d have to wait, I hadn’t time to chat.
When I was twenty-two, I felt No hurry, I had long enough – I played my hand as dealt, With not a worry ’Bout that marriage stuff. I never doubted I Would still succumb To walking down the aisle. But not today, I’d sigh, Though not so glum – Best put it off a while.
When I was thirty-three, my oldest friend Got married Out the blue. I wondered if this were my end ?, And tarried On the best man’s pew. Should I be busy scouting out A wife ?, Had I now come to this ? Was I now forced, despite my pout, To share my life With wedded bliss ?
When I was forty-four, And still not married, I was short of time… I could delay no more, For all I parried, Burning through my prime. I had to face the fact It’s now or never – I was flabbergasted ! Had to get my act Quick up-together, While the music lasted…
But now I’m fifty-five, And still unmarried, Yet am quite content – I found that I can thrive When left unharried By the Big Event. No more anticipating To propose, And life is no less good. I am no longer waiting – But who knows, One day, I guess I could…
Geological Time Spiral by Joseph Graham, William Newman, & John Stacy
Counting Forwards
Imagine, if we like, To the Earth when it was younger – Let’s go back in our minds As Rodinia accretes and binds. Imagine all the life, With its breeding and its hunger, Is all within the ocean wide, While all the land is dead and dried. Go on back a billion years To when the Tonian began, And the first alga brave appears In the inter-tidal span. And let’s call this Year Thousand in our plan.
Now imagine, if you like, A thousand million later – To Britain, as it will become, Through evolution’s endless sum. Let’s use the past to take a hike, To be our ad-hoc dater – With ev’ry year that we explore That’s adding-on a million more. Ready ? Well then, come with me ! To Year One Thousand, long before, When Vinland Vikings rule the sea And early green specs dot the shore – And let’s see history expand once more.
1000-1280 The Tonian is a long old stretch, From Ethelred to Longshanks. We’re not sure when things happened quite, So none of these are strong ranks, But sponges would appear to appear Around the Fourth Crusade, Just as we leave the Dark Age, As the Boring Billion fade.
1280-1365 The Cryogenian grows cold, As the mediaeval warmth recedes – The plague upsets the status quo, As animals succeed. The monks and fossils leave their records, (Fewer than we’d wish), As peasants rise-up, and the jellies – Both the combs and fish.
1365-1460 The Ediacaran, through the Hundred Years War, Is a pregnant time. The Agincourt slaughter sees new forms of life Are on the climb. We’ve so little idea what, Though likely all the phyla we know Are going their separate ways back then, As the trade and prosperity grow.
1460-1515 Bang ! The War of the Cambrian Roses And Henry Tudor the Trilobite. Bosworth Field is awash with early fish, As eyes first see the light. Predators prey, so the shell evolves, And the codpiece probes the way to dress – And we know so much of those olden times Because of the Burgess printing press.
1515-1555 The Ordovician sweeps the monks away And ends in the great divorce – The Little Ice Age causes mass extinction, Though with a patchy force. Most of the phyla shrug it off, As do the merchants of the day, While plants colonise a whole new world of land, Down Mexico way.
1555-1580 The Elizabethan Silurian Sees vascular plants grow bodice and ruff, While armoured fish develop jaws As Catholics have it tough. The millipedes creep onto shore While Mary Queen of Scots must flee, And Francis Drake sails round the world, While scorpions swarm the sea.
1580-1640 Awaiting the tetrapod armada in Plymouth, Comes the Devonian span – Sharks and ammonites emerge In the Tempest of Caliban. King James writes his Bible On the wood of the early trees, Till the Civil War extinction Brings the shallows to their knees.
1640-1700 With the Carboniferous Restoration, Amphibeans arrive. There’s giant dragonflies in the endless forests, Where spiders thrive. They lay-down future coal, of course, As London is aflame – Till the Glorious Revolution, When the reptiles change the game.
1700-1750 The Permian now joins Pangaea With the Hannoverian line – Dimetrodon and future-mammals Have their chance to shine. But from the North, a Great Dying Sweeps them from their heights – The lava traps of Siberia, And the pikes of the Jacobites.
1750-1800 The Triassic sees a trident of firsts – Pterasaurs, crocomorphs, dinosaurs. The sea’s full of plessies and ichthies and turtles, An empire stretching to distant shores. But American lizards break away From rule they call draconian, And a great extinction’s coming-in That’s all thanks to Napoleon.
1800-1855 The Regency brings us the Jurassic, Victoria sees placentas get birthed, While the Chartists challenge the old big beasts, As the sauropods shake the earth. The allosaurs fight stegosaurs, While archaeopteryx soar above Of the Valley of Death as India splits, On their way to becoming a dove.
1855-1935 The Cretaceous next, but where to start ? Pangea well-and-truly splits, While flowers bloom for Victoria’s weeds, And spinosaurs are Edwardian hits. Veloceraptors perish in the Depression, But T-Rex jazzes the town With Triceratops to the very end, When the asteroid comes crashing down.
1935-2000+ Into the Cenozoic we go, As the atom bomb sees things get hot. Mammals and birds diversify, As hippy grasses grab their shot. Hominids climb down from the trees As Tony Blair brings-down the freeze – Then Christmas Day in ’99 Sees farmers plant communities.
Imagine, if we like, Where our journey goes from here – What might the next long thousand bring To life that’s ever-quickening ? And when extinctions strike, Then new forms suddenly appear. History shows progress all the while, Though fashions change the style. But here, for now, our trek is done, We’ve counted up the years we hold, From an Anglo-Saxon simple son To multi-cultured forms so bold. They tell the greatest story ever told.
Happy birthday ! Yes, it’s true, Rhyming Couplets is turning six, so here’s a special treat for anyone who’s still out there.
Similar to my championing of the Holocene Calendar, I hate counting backwards, and can’t wrap my head around the numbers. Therefore I propose the Paleontology Calendar, which can either begin at 0 (equal to 2,000 MYA) when the Great Oxydation Event was coming to an end, or at 1,000 MYA when the first algae was colonising the land. The latter is more useful, as it results in three-digit numbers rather than four, as we don’t have much evidence for what happened prior to the Ediacaran fauna emerging (they’re not called the Boring Billion for nothing…) However, I’ve adopted the former here so that the dates can line up with European history to make conceptualiseing the events easier, at least for me. By happy coincidence, 1000 MYA is also when Bicellum first appears, which might just be the earliest evidence we have of animals evolving away from algae…
Note that all dates prior to the Cambrian are tentative and likely to change in the future. Just when the animal phylums diverged is unclear as there are very few fossils, and rely on DNA analysis and molecular clocks. Furthermore, the current estimated dates may be a few years different from their historical counterparts for the sake convenience (for example, some think that algae first poked its head out of the water as early as 1200 MYA). Come on, this is a poem, not a textbook !
Turmeric and ginger, Cumin, mustard, mace, Red-hot chilli peppers, With cardamom to taste, Cinnamon, paprika, And nutmeg makes it sweet, White pepper, black pepper, Turning up the heat.
This illustration seems to come from The Burke Museum, but alas I have no idea who drew it.
Limb-Slungs & Beam-Shanks
Some daddy-longlegs are spiders in cellars, And some daddy-longlegs are leg-craning flies. Some are strange scorpings who walk in the harvest, But all have more leg than they should for their size. Some daddy-longlegs are tip-toeing fellers, And some daddy-longlegs are mummies-on-stilts. Some have evolved from their cousins the farthest, But all are as lanky as when they were built.
A selection of heavyweight horizontals from Darcy Clothing
Shaggy Legs
One stocking, two stocking, three stocking, four, All hanging on the chimney-breast, drying from the hoar In the last of the embers of the evening’s sycamore – While their would-be wearers are upstairs a-snore.
One stripy, one chequey, one polka-dot, And one of them chunky with a Celtic knot. Here and there are patches, where the wool is shot, To keep their feet safe from the Winter as they trot.
One mini, two midi, one bigger skin, Though all of them kiddie-sized, toe-tip to shin. Yet looking rather empty here with no legs within, Are four half-pairs – but where are their kin ?
One two three and a fourth is the score, Though I wonder why they hung-up the footwear they wore ? Placed by the fire where no-one can ignore Are one stocking, two stocking, three stocking, four.
When does a walk become a hike ? When does a saunter start to stride ? Upon how many trails must I strike Before I get to the other side ? When does a trek become a wander ? When does a road not lead to Rome ? Upon how many paths must I ponder Before I get to go back home ?
Beneath the Waves – Garden of Buried Hopes by Nightblue-Art
The Bootymen’s Air
There is, it’s said, a pirate ship That haunts the Caribbean. Or does she sail the Orient, Or pilot the Aegean ? Was ever there a stranger craft On which men went to sea on ?
No-one seems to know her name, For all she rides the swell. Some say she’s The Banshee, Some The Siren, some The Belle, Perhaps there’s plenty meet with her, But none who live to tell.
Yet one fact all agree on, Is you hear her when she nears, By a slow and lonely singing That the ozone brings our ears – And a world away from the racket Of the usual pirate jeers.
They claim that it’s her figurehead Who keens upon the waves – That is, it is the ship herself And not her crew of knaves, As she bares down on the helpless souls And sings them to their graves.
But eerier yet, her voice, they say, Will echo off the sea, And bounce upon the clouds and back While the breeze blows in her key, She sounds from all directions, And in perfect harmony.
So if you ever catch a snatch Of ghostly murmurings, And if your hold is full of coin And fingers full of rings – Then pray it’s just the whistling wind, And not the ship who sings.
The clock is ticking, Fuse is lit – So no more bricking, This is it ! Oh no, There’s still a long and rocky road to go. Let’s chomp down on the bit, For we’ll never get to reap unless we sow.
The walls are shaking, Floor’s on fire, The news we’re breaking’s Looking dire – Whoa-whoa, Looks like we’ll have to take this blow-by-blow. For if we don’t aspire Then we’ll never overcome the status quo.
Our spirit’s flagging, Muscles cramp, Our mojo’s sagging, Powder’s damp – How so ? We’ve faced the ebb, now let’s surge with the flow ! So up-and-at-em champ, Cos when danger’s high, it’s too late to lie low.
We’re all we’ve got, Let’s try somehow, The iron’s hot, The time is now ! Hey-ho, Let’s buckle-up and get on with the show. It’s time to give this world some wow And leave behind a golden afterglow !
They can’t tell, and I don’t tell ’em, But my wedding ring is stainless steel. Recycled from an old tin can – It may be fake, but it’s just as real. You see this diamond ? That ain’t no diamond, That’s a cubic or I’m a liar – She does the job in her own sweet way, What she lacks in sparkle, she makes in fire.
She’ll last twenty, might last thirty, Before she’s looking as cloudy as me. They say she has no resale value, But which of us has, once we’ve lost the key ? On-sale and off-brand – he knows me well, As a contra-flow goat among the sheep – To win some brides will cost you the Earth, But I came so gloriously cheap.
Sleep now, I’ll wake you If something should happen. Best grab it As it grabs you, And blow your light out. Breathe now Like beach waves, Let deltas come lapping, Enjoy it While you’ve got it, There’s some go without.
Sleep now, I’ll wake you, But not till the morning. Best welcome The dreaming, And dream one for me. Breathe now, Like purring, Until the new dawning. Enjoy it, You’ve earned it, And it all comes for free.
Rhyming Couplets 