[Jayne Osborn]

Congratulations to Graham and Sylvia for this one, not an easy comp.
And my apologies if this is late – I’ve been on holiday for a week and came home to find The Oldie had been delivered – but I know not how many days ago.

Jayne

The Oldie Competition
Tessa Castro

In Competition 201, I was quite prepared to believe all your accounts of ‘Meeting a Griffin’. Sue Chambers’s griffin was a carved bit of heraldry come to life; Bill Webster’s a botched piece of animal design – like a man; Pat Stilwell’s an anthropophage outside the pub; Phoebe Flood’s emerging from a huge egg; and James Silcock’s – oddly convincing – a strange man in black. Diana Cutler even sent a picture of her griffin at Bletchley, so it must be true.
Commiserations to these, and congratulations to those printed here, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a fabulous Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Mike Morrison for his trilimerick.

It’s true! I once dated a Griffin –
Thé dansant, preceded by tiffin:
Her lissom physique
Turned mes genoux quite weak;
My resolve, notwithstanding, did stiffen.

I fell for the aquiline beak
And that plumage, soft, silky-smooth, sleek:
Her leonine torso
Enthralled me the more so;
I dumbstruck with love, could not speak…

She sighed, a tear crept from her eye:
‘I’d better come clean, hadn’t I?
Down-There’s rearranged
Now – before “things” were changed
I was Ivan the Wyvern from Wye.’
Mike Morrison

I once met with a griffin,
He smiled at me and said,
Would you like to come and dine with me,
Would you like to share my bed?
I looked at him in horror,
His beaky face loomed close,
His eyes were red and glistening,
His beetling brow morose.

He said that he would love me
As his talons stroked my skin,
And his hairy leg moved over me
Brushing on my shin.

But coming to my senses
I managed to get free,
He sadly turned and flew away,
Oh, I wish he’d taken me.
Katie Mallett

It seemed so fitting: Altai Mountain pass,
Where ancient Greeks said Scythian tales had told
Of mystic eagle-lion-ones who clasp
Their nested treasuries of antique gold;
So fitting I, climbing alone, should meet
A very paragon of that sage race –
An aura’d prophetess, rose-feathered (feet:
Bird-talons plus clawed paws) – there, face-to-face!
I came for immaterial wealth: divine
Anointing, and to learn. All this she knew,
So did not slay but taught me: truth like wine!
I drank my fill of wisdom, then – we flew!
Returned to Earth, I weary am, and ache.
My food’s long gone … now all my water, too.
Back to base-village my slow way I make.
Will folk at home believe me?
And – do you?
Graham King

My child, were you conceived that frenzied night?
When, lion-haunched, his talons poised to hold,
the sharp-beaked hound of Zeus plundered sleep;
that beast of legend, guardian of the gold.

With lashing tail, his hybrid frame sought out
my crimson bed – and entered, great wings flexed…
At dawn I spurned that night as fantasy
yet, child, your presence leaves me still perplexed.

As kinsfolk gather near the birthing pool
they bring you gifts and pure anointing oil
to soothe; approaching with indulgent smiles
they peer inside the cradle … then recoil.

And as I touch you, feel your tiny claws,
I need to know, small creature, are you kith
and kin, or something conjured in a dream –
your furry thighs, those half-formed wings, a myth?
Sylvia Fairley