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2013 Poetry Theme Challenges#08 Once Upon a Happy Ever After |
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We all have books and stories that have stayed with us from childhood through adulthood.
No great surprise one of mine JM Barrie's Peter Pan which oddly means more to me as an adult
than it did as a child. The challenge this time is not necessarily to retell the stories but
to share what they mean to you - a tribute as it were. Happy quilling to you all Jemmy XXXX
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Once Upon a Happy Ever After
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Terry ClitheroeIt seems like I was always able to read And fabulous adventure was my need. The adventures of Biggles by W.E.Johns I based my nocturnal adventures upon Tales where reading I was assiduously drawn. Then I found Enid Blyton's famous five They'd 21 adventures on which I'd thrive. Later was Asimov and others of his ilk Arthur C. Clarke I treated just like silk And Edgar Rice Burroughs I didn't bilk. Jack Whyte talked of England after Rome, Of Angles and how AEglaland was named. How they and Saxons made England home And the North west the Vikings claimed.  back to list |
Jem Farmer - Roxi St Clair Pan Said Peter Pan, "I will ne'er be a man" I am young and free because I am Pan My boyish heart can never fade to age Yet gathers dreams of years in wisdom's sage While Hook put my fairy love in a cage I taught my boys the magic words to sing Lest my fairy die on a broken wing I could not stand and watch my beauty die For she alone is my heart's reason why My love the means by which her wings can fly Said Peter Pan "I believe, I do, I do" I believe in the love that holds my soul And I believe in you to make me whole I believe in love that is me and you Tink Beloved Pan, "I'll ne'er stay held captive" My freedom comes from all the love you give Boyish charm and sweet unrelenting heart No Captain's deeds will make us ever part A lifetime beginning we may now start My brave Pan, I imagine Hook's surprise Must've been a shocking look in his eyes Pan, 'tis only your heart that I carry Thine heart offered freely by this fairy My dear Pan, whom someday I shall marry My life also yours with whom I entrust I'll fly you to stars that shine and twinkle 'Naught so hard for this fairy to sprinkle Magic mixing two heart's with pixie dust back to list |
Peter WillowdownDragon-boat sailing down a river, to what fabulous island are you sailing, laden with roses and spices. "Never you mind," called back the Captain to my enquiry "but look for us in two months time when we return with a bride for the new-crowned King of Summerland. These flowers and condiments are just a tiny portion of her dowry. In the days to come you will see many dragon-boats pass this way, each one laden with rare and marvellous things: ice swans carved from arctic glaciers, pens that write the most marvellous poetry, fashioned from the plumage of multi-coloured Birds of Paradise, satins and silks and acrobatic dwarfs all liveried in chequerboard quilt, expensive teas and resins from yellow Cathay, black and red lacquered boxes from the courts of old Nippon, fir-cones dipt in molten emerald and ruby, a map of the known world drawn by seven blind virgins on the puffed-up chest of a great white booby - these and many other wonders too unlikely or pulchritudinous to deserve to be observed by itinerant riverside moochers such as yourself. Look out for them, bumpkin, and take good note so that you might, in the roster of years to come, catalogue them to your grandchildren and watch their eyes grow round in wonder!" "What a haughty fellow," mused the peregrinatic poet to himself. "But still, he is right. I will come again tomorrow at the same time and bring a notebook. I have never even heard of this self-styled King of Summerland and would gaze, if only for a minute or two, upon the loveliness of Her Beauty with the great of the world as well as its humblest fellow when she passes hither in eight weeks - a fabulous creature plucked from her homeland like some gaudy ostrich or phoenix feather. Does she wed from love or the dictates of state? I shall raise a glass of ale to her this evening before I return to the wife and listen to her awful keening... ----- Ship of Leaves Ships of Leaves, with matchsticks for masts, leaving today on oak leaf winds, bound for who knows where. Wish us Bon Voyage, you city dwellers and sticks-in-the-mud… we may be voyaging to disaster or we may be sailing to great futures just around the next bend of the river and past Farmer Mossop’s cabbage fields and the old windmill where Fred the Tramp sometimes sleeps in Winter, drinking homemade potato whiskey and cooking old roots on the old stove he got off Frederick Fox. Ships of leaves, with matchsticks for masts and the occasional dragonfly to guide us. Watch out for that half blind frog and Old Man carp flexing his teeth; watch out for the Pookha that lives in Dead Man’s Lake and the will-o-wisps in Madman’s Marsh. Life may be joyful, life may be harsh, but aboard the Beautiful Barnacle we all pull together, playing merry shanties on bagpipes and harp and dancing a boisterous hornpipe. Heave-ho, my hearties and break out the shag! Watch out for the Leopard Fish, the Water Dragon, Eels and the gruesome Whirlpool Nag… Ships of leaves, we’re leaving today; we’ve stocked the larder with little snacks of basmati rice and thimbles of cool morning dew. We’d like to stay another day but we’ve already said our farewells. At last we’re off, hurray, hurray, - ships of leaves, sailing away! back to list |
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