Mark making

In Competition No. 2988 you were invited to compose a poem making the case for a national commemoration day for a person or thing of your choice.
 
While Alanna Blake championed the dandelion, there were also impassioned calls for days that high-five Thomas Crapper, Doris Day and the tent. I, for one, would happily celebrate a Tom Waits day with Adrian Fry. The winners below take £25 each. Bill Greenwell pockets £30.
 

Bring us the day of the dodo,
The day of the passenger pigeon,
That their memories never corrode, oh
Let’s cheer them, and more than a smidgen:
Let’s praise those whose very long luck
Receded to zilch and to zippo:=
The quagga, the Amsterdam duck,
The bluebuck, the tiny dwarf hippo,
The great auk they killed on St Kilda,
The red rail, and slim Wimmer’s shrew,
All dead for a ducat, a guilder,
Like the broad-faced and pale potoroo.
Though the gracile opossum’s extinct,
Let us sift our remembrance’s urn:
All creatures’ misfortunes are linked —
Don’t forget. It could soon be our turn.
Bill Greenwell
 
Please let there be just once a year
A day when gods have vanished,
When things are seen as they appear
And heaven has been banished.
And on that day let every bell
Be tolled for US alone,
A day we wish each other well
And ghosts of gods have gone.
Then let us praise the minds of those
Who burned in cause of science,
The heretics whose conscience chose
A statement of defiance.
And if they must let people pray
That in the years to be
Not one, but every single day,
Will come as heaven free.
Frank McDonald
 
We burn Guy Fawkes on bonfire night
Because he hatched a plot.
Yet many think that he was right
(Though many others not.)
 
So let us choose to burn instead
A chap, we won’t say who,
That everyone thinks better dead,
Except his motley crew.
 
A scarecrow we will stuff with straw
To represent this person,
Since nobody, in peace or war,
Could prove to be a worse ’un,
 
And we will execrate the same,
Who sold his soul for cash,
Giving his body to the flame,
Till it be turned to ash.