North and South

In Competition No. 2963 you were invited to submit a poem about the North or the South or one comparing the two. -Tennyson’s lines ‘bright and fierce and fickle is the South,/And dark and true and tender is the North’ (from ‘The Princess: O Swallow’), which inspired this challenge, produced a wide-ranging and exhilarating entry that took me from the bridge table to North Korea and beyond. The winners earn £25 each. Frank McDonald pockets £30.

In the north there’s a fish with a serious wish
To break out and be queen of the sea,
And she tells all the others we’re sisters and
brothers

Who ought to get wise and be free.
In her lust for control she looks out for a hole
In the barriers keeping her in.
With the power of her mouth she discredits the
south

As she waves a contemptuous fin.
But little she knows of the icebergs and snows
That exist in the oceans outside,
For her hunger to rule turns a fish to a fool
As she waits for a welcoming tide.