[John Whitworth]

Competition
Saturday, 11th June 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week's Competition

In Competition No. 2699 you were invited to submit an ‘Ode to an Expiring Frog’ or to any other creature that is not long for this world.

Inspiration here comes of course from the magnificent Mrs Leo Hunter, embodiment of provincial literary pretension and authoress of this poignant piece:
Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log
Expiring frog!
Adrian Fry’s McGonagall pastiche entertained, as did Ray Kelley, J. Garth Taylor, Shirley Curran and Martin Parker. All in all, it was an impressive entry. ‘Finely expressed,’ as Mr Pickwick might say.
The winners, printed below, get £25 each, except Bill Greenwell, who nabs £30.

Watching you, will I inhibit
Your passage to the Great Beyond
Towards the Happy Hunting Pond
Or interrupt your final ribbit?
Disrupt this agonising soak
Between the weeds, beside the slime
Now that the world is calling time,
When you are just about to croak?

Here in this primordial slop
Do you look back in peace and pride
At your unchecked insecticide?
Though caught here on your final hop,
You pleased me when in gelid spawn,
With tadpole tricks in jars at school.
Though sinking in this drooling pool,
I’ll miss you, pop-eye, every dawn.
Bill Greenwell

Oh hideous crunch! Oh sad and sorry sight!
Oh wretched creature writhing in distress
Whose slow, meandering journey through the night
Draws to its close in this unholy mess!
Alas, because of one blind step amiss
No further will you travel, faithful friend,
No longer wander in molluscan bliss,
For here is where your silver trail must end.
Oh sullied sole that crushed your fragile shell!
Oh foul foot that leaves you oozing slime!
Forgive my careless tread, and fare you well
On this, your final, sweet, celestial climb
To join the hosts of those who’ve gone before,
The ghosts of shattered gastropods who meet,
Re-armoured under shells that break no more,
On heavenly snails’ trails free from feckless feet.
Alan Millard

I warned you but you wouldn’t go away,
a mobile blip disrupting Film On Four.
I swore, got up and tip-toed for the door
to fetch the swat, not liking toxic spray.

I caught you on a sill. As Chandler wrote,
You’re ‘shining and blue-green and full of sin’,
But now you wave your helpless legs and spin
And buzz in mortal frenzy while I gloat.

Some argue it’s bad karma to destroy
Whatever lives and channels the life-force.
Not me. I’ll liquidate without remorse
a filthy house-pest, programmed to annoy.

Since no Samsara Eye inhibits me
These quatrains are no threnody for you,
But for humaneness’ sake here comes the coup
De grace, to speed you to eternity.
Basil Ransome-Davies

Thine exoskeleton, dark green
In life (how suitably marine),
Shall shine an appetising red
Betimes when thou art steamed and dead,
Oh lobster!

Alive, thou art a frightful sight;
Deceased, a savoury delight.
The stovetop cauldron we prepare
Shall render thee fair gourmet fare,
Sweet lobster!

We hear the water hiss and surge.
Now from the fridge shalt thou emerge
To be translated into pure
Enchantment for the epicure.
Ahh! Lobster!
Chris O’Carroll

Rat, I did not lay the bait
that’s brought you to this parlous state.
Your dulling eyes encounter mine
and I recall the famous line:
‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie’
and grieve with Burns, but then at least he
saved the mouse, whereas I watch
your death old rat, and cannot scotch
the human habits that determine
which are pets and which are vermin.
Janet Kenny

This is our fate: while you were heading north
I, on the contrary, was heading south.
And so your elemental journey forth
is ending on my windscreen’s greedy mouth.

Only the glass divides us: you are there,
expiring just beyond the wipers’ sweep,
while I sit here, cocooned in filtered air,
watching you twitch and shudder into sleep.

A euphemism: you won’t wake from this.
It’s my speed moves your wings, not life’s last throes.
Three inches right, you would have been ‘near miss’
and not a head-on crash. That’s how it goes.

At 70 mph I meditate
upon your ending here as insect sap:
one among many, victim of chance fate.
I’ll wash you clean away at Watford Gap.
D.A. Prince