Sashes & Splashes
I love to hear the raindrops from the dry-side of the window,
As they pitter-patter on the misty glass, kept well at bay –
The panes become my armour from the showers and the wind,
So I can watch the running rivulets, a quarter-inch away.
Mongeese
I’m far too much busy just watching these wonderful creatures
To care for your grammar.
They’re so like the ferrets and martens in habit and features –
They drown out your clamour.
They aren’t, though, that closely related (they’re closer to panthers),
They just look the same –
For evolution converges on similar answers,
And so does their name.
Ode to Laze
Lazy, far too lazy, far too idle,
Don’t ask me.
Far too needful of relaxing,
Far too dodgeful of all taxing
Action that disrupts my lethargy.
I don’t run when I can sidle,
I make sloths look suicidal,
Vegetate with pride –
So don’t ask me.
Monotongue
My Latin may be lacking,
My Dutch may be unknown,
In Thai and Greek I cannot speak,
My English stands alone.
If I can’t win with Mandarin,
I still might cast my a spell –
I shall compete with language sweet,
And use my English well.
The Words Become Flesh
Ev’ry book in the Bible
Is the Book of Numbers really,
With its chapters and its verses,
All ennumerated clearly.
And its drop-caps and its sub-heads,
And its footnotes full of freight –
Now there’s so much ink on its onion-skins,
It doubles up the weight !
Everything from Shells
Downs go up and downs go down,
As wave on wave of frozen ocean
Built each ridge and vale and crown
With ev’ry ancient tide in motion.
Tiny creatures swarmed the sea
And dropped their tiny plates all over,
From Stonehenge to Normandy
As deeply as the Cliffs of Dover.
Singular alga sounds all wrong, as if the term has become strictly a mass noun.
The Hubble Kaleidoscope
So many stars ! And the colours too !
Blurring and sharping into our view.
But best look quick how these nebulas burn –
For sooner or later, the lens must turn.
January, January
Following the annual merry,
Who could welcome January ?
All this longest, poorest month,
We’re waiting for the Thirty-Oneth.
Subscription
To a gentleman of mechanistic means,
Who loves to read and read about ingenious machines:
I bring you word of piston, crank and drum –
And not just once or twice, but for a dozen times to come.
By George !
Bernard Shaw, as sharp as a razor,
Quite at home in a tie and blazer.
But his beard is less Belgravian –
He may be Shaw, but never Shavian.
Rhyming Couplets 