[Jayne Osborn]

Congratulations to Alison and Gail. Alison has had several wins of late, joined us over three years ago and has still posted here only once. (Was it something we said, Alison? Can we coax you out of hiding?)

Next comp is a bit of an odd un: ‘Meeting a Griffin’ (See new thread)
Jayne

The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

In competition 199 you were invited to write a poem called ‘First Time in the Country’. The great divide was between ‘country’ taken as a state and as rural expanses. In the latter case, a surprising number of entrants imagined country matters, as Hamlet called them.
Commiserations to all the good poets who did not win this month, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the rus-in-urbe Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Max Ross. In the issue for next month, we’ll reveal the winners of Competition No 200.

The first time I saw Italy
I reached there unexpectedly
And saw the plains of Lombardy,
A wonder to behold.
Italian sunshine greeted me,
And all as far as I could see
Was buried in tranquillity;
It shone for me like gold.
I’d come of course with company
And on my mighty odyssey
Companions had been lost to me
That were too sick or old.
Behind me was adversity,
Appalling trials and tragedy;
Few elephants were left to me,
But Fortune aids the bold.
Max Ross

They brought us to this place.
I don’t know where my mother is.
I hold my baby brother in my arms.
A woman talks to us. I can’t make out
what her words mean. My father died
on the barbed wire. There were police.
We didn’t understand what they wanted.
A girl gave out thick socks and that was good.
Wet now, but better than the boat.
The sick man died, and they heaved him
into the sea. Somebody prayed. We said Amen.
This place has once been grass but now it’s mud.
The woman beckons, so I’ll follow her.
My little brother has stopped crying now.
The rain has turned to snow. It’s falling on
his open eyes. He does not blink.
Alison Prince

In the sultry summer weather
air-conditioning stirs a breeze.
What fool thought it would be better
snogging underneath the trees?

Shakespeare’s lovers got romantic
in the acres of the rye.
Not me, luv. It drives me frantic
chasing off each gnat and fly.

Poets make their faintest step heard
in the fields of summer spuds,
offering, like Marlowe’s shepherd,
belts of straw and ivy buds.

Me, I like my belts of leather,
and the sunshine burns me black.
Come, my love, let’s bed together
in my ducky two pair back.
Gail White

So this was Australia. There was so much light
I thought the sky had rinsed itself away. There were cockatoos
In the eucalypts, yellow-legged and crested. They might
Have known me; they watched with heads on side
As if they would impart a secret. And like a bride
The oleanders flowered white in tumbled tiers.
A Christmas beetle, iridescent green, banged his small hide
Against a window; the blue
Of sapphires clothed the vault of sky.
The red gums blossomed, sweet and redolent
Of an old land, from whence my people came.
The birds looked down. One of them spoke my name.
G M Southgate