Two poems from Gillian Southgate

The first was among the winning entries in a recent Spectator Literary Competition:

A POEM WITHOUT AN ‘E’

 Aaron Bronsky bought an aardvark, sat it in an aviary,

Put a cockatoo in with it. (Pong was not too savoury).

Molly Mary bought a moggy, truly was a fractious puss,

It would rub its fur against a window jamb to start a fuss.

Aaron and his Molly Mary thought that both might go away

On a train to Torquay station, for a working holiday,

Taking aardvark, Bronsky’s birdy,  Molly Mary’s moggy too.

What was Aaron’s inspiration? Not warm sands, but Paignton Zoo!

   The second is a sonnet (with plenty of "e"s):

SONNET

See how the summer blooms are falling dead

Blasted by weeks of paralysing sun

As July days their scornful series run.

See how the rushes dry up in the mead,

Look where the moorhen chicks pursue a lead

To where the water courses are not spent and done.

Even for children, days are not much fun,

And without school, they wither like a weed

Half buried on the grass, while never

As she’s done before, in wind or frost

The vixen lifts her russet head and shrills

Her mating call. And shall we ever

Contemplate a summer more than lost,

Or welcome rain on Surrey’s folded hills? 

Gillian Southgate