[Jayne Osborn]

Congratulations to good old John for holding up the Sphere with his excellent entry
(I still think that "Look Dad, a cow" was one of the strangest titles for a poem I've ever seen. I'm sure that even John didn't say "Here's one I wrote earlier" for THAT topic!)

(Next comp on a new thread.)

Jayne

The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION No 163 you were asked for a poem with the title ‘Look, Dad, a cow’. The phrase had been used to promote what people call the countryside as part of a campaign by the English Tourist Board, whether with more success than changing its name to VisitEngland (all one word), I cannot tell.
Your bucolic verses focused on the inherent peculiarity of an animal known by its sex, rather than by the name of a species. Paul Elmhirst decided to take the persona of a bull (‘Sometimes I wander by the brook / Pondering on the nature of hay’) whose complacency is finally punctured by the title remark. Alison Prince’s narrator was one cow in a herd, pestered by ‘car-animals’ that ‘come / in summer, along with the warble-fly’. Ginger Jelinek ingeniously used a single rhyme (Slough, dhow, plough, chow, highbrow and so on) in a poignant world tour brought down to earth by the title words. Mervyn Lickfold neatly rang the changes with the lines: ‘Look, Dad, a policeman in the street / I thought they only came in cars.’
Commiserations to these, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the far from bovine bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to J Garth Taylor from Ottawa.

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‘Look, Dad, a cow,’ exclaimed the teen.
‘How brilliant that you chose to stay
At this old farm, where we have been
On every former holiday.

‘For me, no swimming on a beach,
No nights of dancing on a pier,
No bathing beauties in my reach,
No rides, no games, no friends, no beer.

‘Instead I stand in smelly mud
And watch this creature gushing drool
While it stares back and chews its cud.
What jolly times! How very cool!’

The father, overjoyed to hear
Such rural passion, made a vow
To bring the family back next year
To try and see another cow.
J Garth Taylor

Quadruped corniculate,
Lactiferous, auriculate,
Of profile unslender,
And feminine gender,
Incessantly cries for the moon.

Her lowing and mooing,
All wishing, no doing,
Has issue climactic
And selenatactic.
She leaps to a popular tune,

And, at sixes and sevens,
Ascends to the heavens,
As bright as Orion.
Do you spy her, sweet scion,
Where the dish ran away with the spoon?
John Whitworth

Look, Dad, a cow.
And, underneath, its udder.
Mum says they squeeze the teats for milk.
The thought just makes me shudder.

Look, Dad, a sheep.
Its white coat’s called a fleece.
Mum knicked one out of Primark
But got caught by the police.

Look, Dad, a goat.
(Are hooves the same as toes?)
Mum says they’ll eat most anything –
Just like the men she knows.

Look, Dad, a horse.
The sign says it’s Titania.
Mum says the meat’s a special treat
And goes in beef lasagne.
Philip Machin

This sat-nav seems to need updating,
perhaps I wasn’t concentrating
when you’d said you’d be navigating –
but let’s not row.

What road is this? I haven’t seen a
legible sign. They should be cleaner.
We ought to spot the O2 Arena
round about now.

We should be somewhere in the city,
somewhere Congestion Charged, and gritty,
but this looks far too green and pretty,
all anyhow.

Son, help me: what d’you see? look hard
for landmark buildings – Tate, the Shard,
Trafalgar Square, or Scotland Yard.
Look, dad. A cow!
D A Prince