Paracrostic

In Competition No. 2469 you were invited to supply a poem in which the initial letters of each line, read down the page, reproduce the first line.
Another comp that was last set nearly 30 years ago, when it was won by J. Crooks with the intriguing key line, ‘Moguls at the BBC’. This time round many of the key lines had a topographical slant. Examples were ‘Liverpool Central’, ‘The midges on Mull’, ‘On Morecambe sands’ and ‘Street maps reveal’. Two delightful openings were ‘A camel, please!’ (Piers Geddes) and Laura Garratt’s Pepysian ‘And so he went to bed’. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes, with an extra handshake for his clinching joke, to Hugh King.

I am a bit upset by Bo,
A girl who tends the sheep,
My flock went missing hours ago
And she’s been fast asleep.
Before I can protest she says,
‘It’s sad how I keep losing
Those sheep — I find their crafty ways
Unbearably confusing.
Perhaps