Awake before 6 am

Awake before 6 am

I’m never sure if the distant roar I hear

is the waves hitting the shore

at St Kilda or St Clair, or

some pre-working-day collective snore

rising from ten thousand or more houses,

people dreaming behind closed doors

of the day gone, or the day before them.

In gardens all around is the pre-dawn

twittering of a thousand birdsongs soaring;

then, sun rising, an end to the outpouring:

a reverence and a waiting awe for

the new day, which to bow before
humans now deplore.

Thanks to Kay Cooke for her helpful suggestion on this poem. 

After reading The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker

Working with rhyme again, and trying to find a way that makes sense as I go along.  In his book, The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker makes a strong case for poems that rhyme.  


After reading The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker

Your challenge, Nick, is to write a poem

in which the lines have rhymes;

I now invite King Jeroboam –

a man whose various crimes

brought Israel to idolatrous knees –

to help me with this verse.

I wouldn’t have brought in such a sleeze

if ‘poem’ wasn’t such a curse

to rhyme with, as you no doubt know,

having struggled with the form;

but sans a lesser-known John Doe

I’m having to perform

with a King whose name just fits the bill –

the only one I’ve found –

and hopefully he’s taken his pill

and doesn’t want to expound

the reason why he led poor Israel off

its proper course of action;

otherwise I’ll have to scoff

to stop him gaining traction

regarding idols, groves and bulls

where worship goes awry,

and a self-centred king who pulls

the wool over everyone’s eye.

The Heaven-born Ploughman

The results of the 2012 Robert Burns Poetry Competition have just been announced, and since I didn't make the cut, I may as well include my entry here.....

The Heaven-born Ploughman

Remembered in life for his gallavanting,

his getting-with- child of too many women,

he’s remembered in death as a saint of the

people, this impoverished farmer of land

and wealthy farmer of words.

Dubbed the “people’s poet” in Russia:

his Scottish face reproduced on a

Russian postage stamp ten years

before the production of two commemorative

British ones: fourpence & one and threepence. 

Further portraiture fame came from the

Clydesdale Bank, on a five-pound note

(the reverse a field mouse and a rose):

the once impoverished poet

more profitable in death than life.

Remembered in places far-flung,                                                                

his antipodean statue  - seagulls seated on his

head – commands by place its status as

centrepiece to the Writers’ Walk

circumferencing Dunedin’s Octagon.

Like Mozart, like Schubert, like Chopin –

short-lived Masters of musical sound,

Burns was short-lived Master of the verbal:

rhythmic and wry, rustic, sincere, and

spontaneous heaven-born ploughman.

Split Infinitives

The following is the result of a nonsense conversation on Facebook...

Split Infinitives – for Matt Scott

The people who reject the rules

and sprinkle their orations  

With split infinitives and more

 egregious violations ..."  Anna Barham

My punctious pal says it’s

an ‘egregious violation

to gamely split infinitives,’

in Facebook conversation.

By ‘gamely’ does he mean in fun,

or doing it with vigour;

taking grammar at a run,

observing it with rigour?

To this the answer I’ve no thought,

but Strunk and White insist,

that split infinitives you ought

not never to dismiss.

No-nonsense Fowler

also works to rule;

considers it a howler

and thinks that you’re a fool.

But Mr Shakespeare, who

re language knew some little,

split infinitives - to show

he cared not a jot or a tittle.