Daffodils honour us with their diaphanous emerging,

familiar old friends, it’s welcome yellow fellows well

met. We greet you gratefully from your submerging

floral heads mutate, from green bud to golden bell.

Nature, benefactor of all provision, gifts indulgence

plays host to these visitors for sadly too brief a stay

endows bright vistas which radiate in rare effulgence

springing in Spring this seasonal and annual display.

Daffodils grow row on row hereabout and all around

a host of them as Wordsworth’s great poem extolled;

flowers that proliferate and thrive upon waste ground

gilding the darkest spaces by their alchemy into gold.

Like gold a noble daffodil yields a treasure for the eye,

an array of optical pleasure then doffs its cap goodbye.

If I were a bird
I could fly up high
In the sky,
A concept of course quite absurd
But a winsome idea had it occurred
For the soaring
Prospect overawing
Terra-bound type outscoring
Gravity-denying thrill of flying
Above all the ant-like crowds,
To say I'd miss this chance would be lying;
Flashing like a scimitar
Through the clouds,
In the manner of the swallow,
Nary aught but jets to follow.

But there is a slight quibble
I don’t think I could even nibble
Or own a beak about to dribble
For that tasty avian treat
At which I squirm
I may be permanently grounded
Leave my feathered friends dumbfounded
Yet I‘m not simply iffy or relatively sniffy,
I wouldn't ,couldn't, eat a ****** worm.

(7th April)

6.4.14's offering for US National Poetry Month

Another poem to hack out,
A flood instead of the usual drought,
This month I dare not slack,
Even if inspiration I lack,
The daily schedule to survive?
Shall I knock out a three line haiku?
Would you, catch a fleeting quatrain,
Or take five, to ameliorate the strain?
I'm now at six, next hardly seventh heaven
Lord knows how I'll make eleven
Twelve, thirteen, tarnation on it
Fourteen suggests a sonnet?  
Fifteen? Oh "dead man's chest"
and that many pirates upon it
Already losing reason stroke rhyme
What may poetry month evoke in time?
I own this day's diatribe seems shirty
TGIA which hath only thirty.

She couldn't express her grief
but knew this tangible loss,
felt affinity with old bones
a bond with lost loved ones.
She cleaved close to those,
it being in her very nature
a clan thing - family loyalty,
bridging a long span of years.
Her trunk trumpeted, mutely,
while lowering a sister's tusk
softly on the blanched shards
of the ancestor herds, tendered
in this final act of fellowship
from one gentle giant to another.

It's a film a steamy English romance,
hero and heroine in black and white
(the steam of ancient train's smoke),
give each other a sly furtive glance
no prospect of rapid ***** or poke;
he removing from her eye a speck,
they part the gent risks a little peck
***? Not in this Empire, oh no siree
Viewer imagine but you may not see.

In a French flick au contraire oui oui
Oh ** ** monochrome mais tres blue
A subtitle or two then "how do you do?"
Hairy hunk grabs at the buxom *****
Tips her over a bed or maybe a bench
Bare-chest nuzzles the actress's *******
****** achieved as their gasping attests
Post-coitus Gauloisy kisses get shared,
Anglo-Gallic brief encounters compared.

brandy is handy
wine is fine
*** is far from humdrum
***** makes me polka
whisky frisky but hopes decline
gin I grin
beers wearies
real ale without fail
alcohol over all
until I fall

"Did you ever see my esteemed Bottom Howard?
"Far more than I honestly ever cared to Sir."
Sir W, legendary thesp turned from his mirror
with a look of thunder. "And you are the most
impudent dresser and I should have rid myself
of you years ago." His hard face soon softened
as it ever did to this old servant and confidante.
"It was a Bottom to behold and no mistake" (Sir
W. laughs). A great ***'s head that my company's
darling designer did, plenty of eye space so that
acting of the enthrallment and my famous twinkle
could be seen in the gods by my public bless'em,
whose few shekels count as much to me as you
well know, as the great and the good out front."

I've seen that twinkle too much in dressing rooms
mused Howard, just put it away you effin' show-off.
"No not you Sir, not one to play to the crowds, or
to ham it up and I know it's widely said in the biz
the biggest *** and Bottom. Always a dream but
hardly ever a pain." (Howard whistles gently, trips
forward to the chair throws a cloak over those broad
shoulders for the umpteenth time) says to his boss:
"Break a leg, won't you Sir?" (meaning it).