Competition | 11 June 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition

In Competition No. 2699 you were invited to submit an ‘Ode to an Expiring Frog’ or to any other creature that is not long for this world.

Inspiration here comes of course from the magnificent Mrs Leo Hunter, embodiment of provincial literary pretension and authoress of this poignant piece:
Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log
Expiring frog!
Adrian Fry’s McGonagall pastiche entertained, as did Ray Kelley, J. Garth Taylor, Shirley Curran and Martin Parker. All in all, it was  an impressive entry. ‘Finely expressed,’ as Mr Pickwick might say.
The winners, printed below, get £25 each, except Bill Greenwell, who nabs £30.

Watching you, will I inhibit
Your passage to the Great Beyond
Towards the Happy Hunting Pond
Or interrupt your final ribbit?
Disrupt this agonising soak
Between the weeds, beside the slime
Now that the world is calling time,
When you are just about to croak?

Here in this primordial slop
Do you look back in peace and pride
At your unchecked insecticide?
Though caught here on your final hop,
You pleased me when in gelid spawn,
With tadpole tricks in jars at school.