Category: Myths & Folklore

Pond Life

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Hydra (Hydridae)
Hydra Producing a Bud by Jan Hamrsky

Pond Life

One day in our science class, we trooped out to the pond
And trawled our nets to haul a hoard from out the wet beyond.
We jamjarred up our specimens, our trove from out the deep,
And took our volunteers back to have a proper peep.
The swimmers and the sediments were busy in their dance,
Or squished between the slides beneath our microscopic glance.
        Tadpoles and waterfleas, fresh-water shrimps,
        Algae and flatworms and dragonfly nymphs,
        Rotifers, water bears, snails by the score,
        Whilygigs, boatmen and duckweed galore.
But best of all, the hydra: the monster in our lake –
One day, or so the rumour went, it turns into a snake !

Hydra, hydra,
Now that I’ve spied ya,
I can’t decide what I love about you more:
Your proof there’s a Zeus, or
Your looks of Medusa ?
Not hard to deduce you’re a snake down to your core.

Just think – an anaconda with a plethora of heads
To slither round the playing field and stalk the cycle sheds !
But Mrs Patrick told us no, the two did not equate,
For hydras were cnidarians, and snakes were vertabrates.
The former lacked a brain as such, and var’ous other parts –
(Though snakes, our teacher told us, were likewise not so smart,
And multi-headed mutants would attack their conjoined brothers)
But hydra bred asexually to be both spawn and mothers !
And better yet, they’d learned a trick for ageing without ageing
By morphing from their adult selves back to their childhood gauging –
So, rather like The Doctor, but with tentacles and stem.
I’d like to see old Herc attempt to kill off one of them !

They say you have a silent c –
Well, not with teenage me !
Cknidarians, cknidarians,
Aquatic antiquarians:
Preserving ancient shapes and genes,
Behold the mighty cknidarenes !
If only Greeks had known of you,
Just think what legends would ensue !
Instead, your polyps are maligned –
Medusae, sure, but not the Grecian kind.
Contrarian cknidarian,
You slithered through myth-infested mind.

Limbo Junction

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railroad tracks in city
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Limbo Junction

The Netherworldly Underground
Are here to keep things flowing –
We’re proud to serve the downward-bound
To get you where you’re going.

The Pearly Gates to Sheol Flyer’s
Very shortly to arrive.
The chartered tour for Angel Choirs
Now departs from Platform 5.

For the Armageddon Sprinter,
Make your way to Platform 6.
For the endless Fimbul Winter,
Take the last train to Apocalypse.

Attention those who head for Hades,
Please take care to spare your blushes –
Carriage F’s reserved for ladies,
Muses, sirens, succubuses.

The overcrowded, overdue
Express to Pandemonium
Must wait a goods train passing through
With waggons of plutonium.

Platform 1: the Nod-Land Sleeper.
Platform 4: the Brimstone Belle.
Passengers for stations deeper,
Take this train, and change in Hell.

The rapid shuttles come and go
From Heaven to Damnation,
While the all-stops Purgatory slow
Has yet to leave the station.

Purple Requiem

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festival music rock sound
Photo by Markus Spiske freeforcommercialuse.net on Pexels.com

Purple Requiem

It ain’t your fireman or soldier
Who risk the most to do their job.
Your real heroes, I told yer,
Are your bassists and strummers,
Your keyboards and drummers,
Your strutting party-dudes and your master bong-plumbers.
They’re ever alert and ever a-throb,
Just waiting for the call to rock the joint large,
Just waiting to save us from the numpties in charge,
Just waiting for the call from the downtrodden mob
To rescue us all from the bummers.

But the price is high, the fates are sprung –
Too many albums filled with the songs they never sung.
Too many sobbing fans recoiling at the haste
With which their idol’s promise was undone.
Too many, many bands atrophied by the waste,
Too many mothers lost their rebel son.
Recruited to the cause while they’re still within their teens,
They must slave away for years in their thousand-dollar jeans,
With the hair and the teeth and the endless magazines.
They’re out there, dying too young –
Labour-market casualties, axemen unstrung.

Do they really hope to die before they get too old ?
Before they’re easy-lis‘ning gold,
Before the cramps have taken hold ?
Or do they think they’re better dead before their soul is sold ?
Before their shooting star has stalled,
Before they’re shagged-out, fat and bald ?
Sometimes living on, they cry, just makes the struggle cheaper.
To play the great gig in the sky, don’t fear he reaper.

Some won’t even make it to the twenty,
Many dead before the big three-oh.
Thus drop the mighty cognoscenti –
When ev’ry flight to Rio
Is another flight could crash,
And what else but on drugs
Can they find to chug their cash ?
And the groupies are exhausting,
And the booze is flowing plenty,
And their bodies suffer burn-out and the rash.
Thus the endless nights of forcing
Make their flesh all pocked and denty,
And suddenly their eyes have lost their flash.
Then when at last the blues hit town,
They gloom on up and come on down,
And find a noose to wear or vein to slash.

And early years, or so I hears, are diciest of all
As the Mayfruits of success will press the harvester to call.
But if they still kick ass at fifty,
Got no pension, ain’t so thrifty,
Gotta take another tour of duty – such a haul.
Sponging cronies, bootleg phonies, “Hello Montreal”,
Three-legged ponies, alimonies, drive them to the wall.
So what sets them so thrillingly upon a road so killingly,
And choose a trade so willingly that sees her children fall ?

Yet still you’re out there, gods divine,
With scream and shout.
Keep on flouting it for ev’ry single one of us,
Keep on pouting it for ev’ry single mug and wuss.
You’re always there, walking the line,
Just rockin’ out.
Keep on vaunting it for those of us who never can,
Keep on flaunting it and sticking it right to the Man,
Keep on party on and shine,
Just like it’s Nineteen Ninety-Nine.
For they can never undermine the peace and love that you began.

You’re always out there living it, living for us all –
And cos you are so superstar,
You lighten up our daily crawl –
You make it all alright by far, for us to be so small.
So rest in peace, and rest in rock, each fallen avatar –
Your life was brief, yet through our grief
Comes weeping your guitar.

Cuculus horologus

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Cuculus horologus

I once had a clock,
Just an ordin’ry clock,
With its cogs that enmesh in a segue
Escape and endock,
With the whispering tock
Of the gentle-most metrical shower.
But a cuckoo took stock
Of my welcoming clock
And she chose it for hosting her egg-lay.
Imagine my shock
As her offspring would mock
At my tranquil repose, ev’ry hour.

That hatchling would knock
At the gears of the tock
And he’d suckle a share of their motion
He’d peck and he’d rock
Till their screws would unlock,
And he’d toss them aside for their power.
Yet still the old block,
Though it lost its own flock,
Was a parent of clockwork devotion.
It pandered this jock
With his swagger and cock
As he sang for his mate, ev’ry hour.

Out There

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moon and stars
Photo by Min An on Pexels.com

Out There

Life, it shouldn’t be so rare –
I don’t mean Mars or Venus.
There isn’t much can flourish there –
Bacteria, perhaps, can bear,
But higher life is pretty spare –
Too harsh for such a genus.
Yet surely in the Milky Way,
How many planets must convey
A goldilocks for genes at play ?
They surely must have seen us.

Life, it shouldn’t be alone –
It seeks out other threads, where
On planets older than our own
They should have let themselves be known
Across the interstellar zone –
What wonders might have bred there ?
The distances, of course, are vast,
Yet still we should receive the blast
Of radio from light years’ past –
Yet all we get is dead air.

Guardian Angelface

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girl with box

Guardian Angelface

I once knew a girl
Who wasn’t so old,
Who went by the name of Pandora –
Her hair was a-twirl,
And her jawline was bold,
And her countenance jarred all who saw her.
For she was a child with orders to follow –
She practised today to be ready tomorrow.

So stern was her stare
As she marched round about,
And no-one had better ignore her.
She never would share
What protruded her pout
Or what epical labours now chore her.
For she was a child with burdens to carry –
She hefted them high, for she’d no time to tarry.

She cradled a box
With she firmly kept shut,
And she stroked it to sometimes assure her.
Her all-weather socks
Were so often a-strut
With that cask always ported before her.
For she was a child with secrets to ferry –
She warded them all, be they downcast or merry.

When asked who had asked,
Who requested her quest,
She might answer Mary or Flora –
And endlessly tasked
With this hallowed behest,
Her mission e’er onwardly bore her.
For she was a child with futures to wonder –
She gathered them up with the stars and the thunder.

The Unfeted

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agriculture clouds colors countryside
Photo by Binyamin Mellish on Pexels.com

The Unfeted

Remember when we dreamed
Of all the ways we could conceive
To change the world ?

Remember when the future gleamed
In rainbow rays ?
And we were so naive
To really think that we would change the world.

Remember when it seemed
Those early days were just the eve
To our success ?

Remember when our promise teemed
In endless Mays ?
And we would soon achieve
The riches rightly due our just success.

But a simple application of statistics
Should be enough to warn us
Of our herculean mission:
When our peers too were flush with optimistics,
No dais could have born us
Till so many faced attrition.
We thought enthusiasm was the only vital spark,
We didn’t see the chasm till we woke up in the dark.

Remember when we schemed
Of what to play and what to cleave
From all of life ?

Remember when frustration screamed,
With cold dismay ?
We could no more believe
That we were brash young kings enthralled with life.

The Layman of Shalott

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I am Half-Sick of Shadows
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by John Waterhouse

The Layman of Shalott

On either side the river lie
The fields that stretch into the sky –
Whose lowlands raise the beans so high,
And grow the barley and the rye
That feeds the folk in Camelot.
And all this land beneath the hoe
Is owned by she who will not show
Her face to those who plough and mow –
The Lady of Shalott.

She lives upon the river isle
Where blow the lilies, mile on mile –
Although she hasn’t left awhile,
Not even to ride out in style
To dance with knights in Camelot.
She keeps within her ivied keep,
Unseen by those who sow and reap,
As if a hundred years asleep –
The Lady of Shalott.

So life goes on and seasons pass,
As sheep are grazed upon her grass –
And any surplus we amass
Is carted off by weight and class
To market-day in Camelot.
But any profits from the trade
Are not for those who turned the spade –
Instead, our labours all must aid
The Lady of Shalott.

I’ve heard it said by those who say,
That she is cursed in some strange way
To never see the livelong day,
To never be allowed to stray
To many-towered Camelot.
All the world, they claim, must pass
Reflected in her looking-glass,
And what she sees, so weaves that lass –
The Lady of Shalott.

But as I dig another ditch
And break my back to till her pitch,
I think about my Lady’s hitch –
And slowly I can feel an itch
That none can scratch in Camelot.
If she is cursed, then who’s the hexer ?
Why would they choose this to vex her ?
Such a fiddly yoke bedecks her,
Lady of Shalott.

And do I really set much store
In curses, blights, and ancient lore ?
They’ve tried to pull this stuff before
To keep them rich and keep me poor,
In temples all through Camelot !
My Lady, is it really charms
That keeps you warm and safe from harms,
While we must shiver on your farms,
Oh Lady of Shalott ?

So what would happen if you leave,
Or look direct at what you weave ?
Just who would care and who would grieve ?
You are, I fear, the most naive
Of any girl in Camelot !
But take a chance, and take it swift,
And you may find the world will shift –
And if you die, at least you lived !,
My Lady of Shalott.

So Mistress, step out, if you dare,
From out your crack’d and gilded lair,
And pull your weight and crop your share,
And help us haul it to the fair
That summons all of Camelot.
Or else, when comes the Winter’s freeze,
And I need fuel and have no trees –
I’ll raid, and burn, your tapestries,
Oh Lady of Shalott !

This of course is a take of the famous Tennyson epic.

No News from Nowhere

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road nature trees branches
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

No News from Nowhere

They slope off and they mooch back,
But where do they go, by-and-by ?
Don’t bother to ask, for there’s no chance of craic –
“Oh, Nowhere”, will come the reply.

I never observe as they’re leaving, alas,
Or fathom the paths they must tread.
There’s no point in asking where lies the green grass –
“Oh, Nowhere” is all that is said.

For they all are real Nowhere Men
When all dressed up with Nowhere to go.
Then there’s nobody home till I’ll see them again,
From the middle of Nowhere with nothing to show.

I’m never invited to join in their trip,
And they never announce their departures, I find.
So the seconds and minutes and decades will slip –
They’re all going Nowhere, and I’m left behind.

They then reappear with a look on their face
That they must have forgotten was there.
It’s happy or guilty or staring in space,
But don’t bother asking, they’ve nothing to share.

A dark place of nightmares or land of their dreams,
A dawdle with boredom, a dance with divine –
They all of them head off to Nowhere, it seems,
And it’s ev’ryone’s business but mine.

Now When They Heard About the Resurrection, Some Began to Scoff

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Oak Pulpit
Oak Pulpit by E E Cowan

Now When They Heard About the Resurrection, Some Began to Scoff

“The Church of England expects its attendance to continue its decline for the next thirty years.”

– The Sion Times

Here I stand, in my pulpit,
Looking down on yawning sands of empty pews –
And in the Sunday papers,
The stats and graphs and surveys tell the news.
Of course, we know the culprit,
This modern life is secular and on-the-go.
The Devil’s at his capers –
And yet, he seems to lack the will to spread his woe.
So year by year and prayer by prayer,
The congregations slowly cease to care.

We’re mocked and feared and left behind –
The faithful die, the faithless breed, the undecided shrug,
And life goes on.
Some are anxious, some are angry, some are smug,
But most are happy, most are kind.
Thirty years from now, then who will save their modern souls
When we are gone ?
But then, they will not need our help, according to the polls.
Can I begrudge their proof and doubt,
When Satan’s reign is peace and love throughout ?

The title come from Acts 17:32, slightly paraphrased from the various translations.  Of course, the world isn’t quite ‘peace and love throughout’, but as both Harold Macmillan and Steven Pinker point out, we’ve never had it so good.

Tags: Poetry Poem Religion Christianity Church