Category: Places

Uncharted

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Detail from Islandia by Abrahim Ortelius

Uncharted

The maps of old were full of monsters –
Terra incognita !
Back when the darkest continents
Were mysteries of consequence.
Wherever our landlocked pencil wanders
Faster than a cheetah,
Then here be dragons, rest assured,
And natives with the heads of birds.

The maps of old were full of empty,
Till we filled them in.
We went and saw, and came back sad,
That there were no beasts to be had.
We’d spare imagination plenty,
But behemoths were thin –
We’d no leviathans to spare,
Just boring humans, ev’rywhere…

All Roads Lead To Roam

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Skywards Bound by Kathrin Longhurst

All Roads Lead To Roam

Where are you roving, our Romany Rhona ?
I’m running to Rome to pursue my persona.
I have to keep going as long as I can,
Or the Pope, when I get there, will be an old man.

Where are you heading, our Harefooted Heather ?
I’m striding to Stockholm to welcome the weather.
I can’t hang around, I’ve a long way to walk through,
Or Odin has no-one but ravens to talk to.

Where are you wending, our Wanderlust Wanda ?
I’m aiming for Athens to pep-up my ponder.
I must chase the rainbow, before it has cleared,
Or else Zeus will have reason to grow a long beard.

Where are you trekking, our Tramp-Treaded Trista ?
I’m casting to Cairo, to visit my vista.
I need to be off, so I’ve no time to chat,
Or else Ra will sink lower and red-faced and fat.

Ultima Thule

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Detail from the Carta Marina by Olaus Magnus

Ultima Thule

Pytheas claimed to have gone to the North
In ninety-six seventy-six HE.
As far as Thule, beyond the Forth –
But where ?  Nobody can agree.
So the name was later applied to places –
Shetland, Norway, Iceland, and on.
Forever drifting North as the traces
Of habitation were stumbled upon.
The word was attached to Eskimos,
As called by those who did the naming –
And a rare-earth element, which shows
The allure it held in its framing.
Finally, in the hundred-and-twentieth century,
A trading post re-used the term
In Upper Greenland, the latest entry
To plant the Grecian germ.
An airbase later sprang up to claim it –
And at last, Thule was a definite place –
It had finally chosen to cash-in its fame
And end its meandering chase.
Until…the Air Force decided to change her,
To strip out the exonym, rebrand the node.
So Thule is free again, ever the stranger,
To wander the North and with no fixed abode.

Thule is usually pronounced as Thool-uh (or perhaps I should say Þool-uh). However, I have seen Tool-ee used, even by myself.

As for the dating, I’m using the far-more logical HE Calendar because I’ve got no time for counting backwards.

Passport

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Ceres by Liz de la Torre

Passport

The whole world is spherical – I know, because I trekked it –
Always passing clockwise,
Passing to the left.
Onto America, vast and eclectic –
Just roaming, you guys,
Always heading West.
Showing my specifics at ev’ry border-post,
Always passing clockwise,
As tradition goes.
Across the Pacific, port-side to island-coast
From volcanic highs,
To sweet laguna lows.
Onto Malaysia, striding like a dandy,
Always passing clockwise,
Half the way around.
Upon mainland Asia, I passed Mr Brandy,
Racing for his prize,
While always Eastward-bound.
But West for I once more, and headlong through the horse-steppe,
Always passing clockwise,
Most polite and deft.
Home through the back door, from my mammoth schlep,
For etiquette, it lies
In moving to the left.

Thanks AI, you didn’t do too bad this time…

Englischer Waltzer

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Englischer Waltzer

Eins zwo drei, eins zwo drei,

Beefeaters, wellingtons, toads-in-the-hole,
Morris and molly and May-round-the-pole,
Our feet may be English, but German our soul,
As we spin to the Saxony stride.

Volkswagens, Porsches, and Beamers and Mercs,
Beethoven, Handel, and Kraft-at-the-works,
Our ears may be English, but German our quirks,
As we turn to the Teutonic tide.

Some say Bavaria,
Some say Vienna –
The where and the when are
Long lost in the swirl.
Spinnen and spinnen,
In cotton and linen –
From Bath to Berlin,
In a wurlitzer’s whirl.

Fish-and-chip, tea-and-jam, bubble-and-squeak,
Stiff-upper sorries and tongues-in-our-cheek
Our words may be English, but German our speak,
As we pulse to the Prussian parade.

Rottweiler, doberman, alsatian, spitz,
The Hamburger Hans and the Frankfurter Fritz
Our names may be English, but German our glitz,
As we shimmy with Swabian suede.

Wange to wange,
From oompah to banger –
It’s no doppelganger,
But dancing for reel.
Schneller and schneller,
In ev’ry bierkeller –
It’s no tarantella,
But spooling its spiel.

Solo Traveller

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The Dark Pool by Laura Knight

Solo Traveller

Happy holiday, saddos !
In your needlessly double-rooms –
Honestly, single berths are only
For cots, and losers, and tombs.
Here’s your single-stayer supplement
To tax you for being alone
And your sad little single table
Where you silently scroll your phone.
Why did you even bother leaving home ?
Why do you care ?
What’s the point of meeting people
When you’ve nothing to share ?
Ah well, it’s all to our profit,
As you pass your gloomy weeks –
A mix of lonely spinsters
And asexual frigid freaks.
We do our best to rub it in, of course,
That’s always fun –
To let you know you’ve failed at life,
To holiday for one.
But in the end, you bring our other guests down
By being there,
You suck the sun right off the beach
With your self-contented air.

Pastoral Symphony

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Pastoral Symphony

The countryside is sometimes all a chorus of its own,
With the songbird sky-sopranos saying grace –
And the yapping dogs’ falsetto, and the tomcats’ mezzo tone,
And the hens and pigeons make an alto brace.
The sheep are then the tenor, the pigs are baritone,
While the cows are mooing low down in the bass,
And underlying ev’rything, the bees provide the drone,
While the clip-clop hooves of horses beat the pace.
And finally, the donkey starts, a soloist alone –
She’s the braying primadonna of the place !

New Kid in Town

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Nashville Athena by orientalizing

New Kid in Town

Country folk are godly folk,
They sing to holy Jesus,
Sing how he’s the one they set their heart upon.
Yet over Nashville way, no joke,
They worship olive trees, yes,
Sing to Grecians in their mighty Parthenon.
They built a statue of Athena
Dressed in gold and ivory,
With ancient eyes of blue that never blink.
They built a temple to the Virgin,
Yet in rivalry –
Cos she ain’t the usual Virgin that they think –

Hallelujah, hail Athena !
Sing it loud and sing it free !
You beat Poseidon with his trident,
And now Jesus with his trinity.
We need a goddess, not a patriarch
To stir these sisters free –
In the Athens of the South, your spark
Lights up your mystery.

Country folk are gawdy folk,
They love their rhinestone rings –
Yet their churches are just warehouses of prayers.
Is Jesus stoney broke
That he can’t afford some decent bling
In which his shouty preachers flog his wares ?
But over at Athena’s place,
There’s statues in the pediments
Of epic battles fought in ancient times –
She may be stoic in her face,
But not so harsh and regiment
To frown upon our splashing-out the dimes.

Hallelujah, hail Athena !
Sing it free and sing it loud !
Lady Wisdom, Lady with the Owl,
Intelligent and proud –
We need a goddess to the arts
For fans to worship when we hum –
A diva moving-up the charts,
Who’s number one till kingdom come.

The original statue was sculpted by Phedias in 9563HE.  This replica was designed by Alan LeQuire in 11990, using gypsum cement, fibreglass-infused plaster, and gold leaf (not ivory, like the original, but close enough – and surely Phedias would have loved to have access to these…)  It is, I believe, based on ancient descriptions and other statues, but I’m sure some original interpretation has been included, and quite right too !

Beaver Geezers

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Photo by Jorge Bilbao on Pexels.com

Beaver Geezers

Beavers are thievers,
By stealing the gravity
Out of the water –
Such utter depravity !
Beavers are stemming our streams
With their half-inched beams,
And leaving them pooling around.
And now I hear beavers
Are back in this manor,
Those peevers and planners
Are channelling London Town.
I see their toothmarks
Graffiti the tree barks
Up to their old larks,
Of gumming the plumbing –
Their home is a slum
Full of mildew and scum,
And whenever they come
They leave the bath running.

Beavers are weavers,
When heaving their timbers,
When lugging their tinder for cleaving together.
You just won’t believe
All the leaves they retrieve
For their bodge for a lodge
And their damnable dam.
These immigrant skeevers
Are tree-rustling reavers –
Who knocked-up a hodgepodge
Wherever they swam.
We end up with either
The swamp in a fever,
Or banks in a stodge
And the brook in a jam.
But now that they’re Cockneys,
And vegan beefeaters –
These beavers won’t shock me a smidge.
So change-up the meter, and take to the bridge –

They’re teeming in the borough, good and thorough,
Down the Central Line,
Grinning with their teeth on Hampstead Heath,
And in the Serpentine.
It won’t be very long
And they’ll be seven thousand strong,
With their ev’ry one a carrier
Of oak and London plain.
They’ll get their sapling shredding done
From Wapping up to Teddington,
By blocking Woolwich Barrier
And flooding Pudding Lane.

Beavers are thievers,
And duckers and divers,
And cunning deceivers,
And wetback survivors –
They’re just like the rest of us,
London domesticus,
Hard-working strivers,
And over-achievers.
And soon they’ll fit right in, I’m sure,
In the melting pot of the pond next door.

The real question, of course, is how do beavers colonise new rivers well away from the old ones ?  Some say they can travel over land for many miles, but we all know the truth – they’re carried there by red kites !

Shires Old & New

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Shires Old & New

English counties show a frozen glimpse
Of population,
Of where we lived, a long time since,
At the dawn of our English nation.
Cathedrals too, and the larger abbeys,
Hint at a bustling past –
Wells and Ripon weren’t so drab,
But boom-times couldn’t last.

Huntingdon, you once were free,
With Somerton and Appleby –
But people change, and trade moves on,
To Milton Keynes or Basildon.

Political constituencies
Can’t stand still too long,
Without some boarder-fluencies
To keep their numbers strong.
Postcode districts are a modern score
To count the blur –
If they survive a thousand more,
They’ll show where once we were.
 
Stevenage, you’re earned your key,
With Swindon and Southend-on-Sea.
But people change, and drift away
To who-knows-where and come-what-may.