Competition No 3690

Set by Leo Casement on 16 July

We asked for stirring verses on garden implements.

Report by Ms de Meaner

Hmm. I have realised, looking at the winning entries en masse, that they're mainly about loud machines, except for Gerard Benson's machete. I'm afraid all the secateurs failed to get my pulse racing. An hon mensh to Ian Birchall for four lines:

My grip is firm, my aim is true,

Beheading rosebay willow;

First Ancram, David Davis - who? -

Then blood pours from Portillo.

£20 to the winners. The vouchers go to Will Bellenger.

It hover'd lightly as it mowed

("It floats on air," the advert trills)

When all at once it minced a toad

Then trashed some golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

It seems to go where'er it please.

Continuous as the cars that shine

And twinkle on the Mill Hill Way,

They mow with never-ending whine

Across the gardens each Sunday:

Ten thousand Flymos at full blast

Suburbanise whate'er is grass'd.

Then oft, when on my couch I dwell

In brain-dead or potato mood,

They screen again Neighbours from Hell,

Which is the bliss of turpitude;

And then my heart with yearning fills

To Flymo next door's daffodils.

John Bevis

(After Southey's "Cataract of Lodore")

How does the Flymo perform on my lawn?

Trimming and swiping

And skimming and striping

And humming and mowing

While coming and going?

Or charging and dashing

And barging and gnashing

And rocking and pivoting

And docking and divoting

And groaning and shunting

And stoning and blunting

And curving and falling

And swerving and stalling

And smouldering and sparking

And mouldering and parking.

That's how the Flymo performs on my lawn!

Gavin Ross

Lawnmower, Man

The water-grass is green, thalassic,

its waves of blade all blunt, unmown,

until is heard the throttled groan

of the Briggs & Stratton 35 Classic.

Neither appetite nor steel need whetting

as lungs of motor and rotor roar:

with the lush cud lodged inside its jaw,

carving a path - with a choice of setting.

Now the reed sea's shaven, as if by Moses,

though he hadn't a 35 Classic mower.

There's plenty faster but plenty slower -

and at dawn, what lawn! The light discloses

how its hot tongue lapped the listless garden,

how petrol zest laid its ghosts to waste,

the candied stripes of its hasty taste.

That's a Briggs & Stratton, beg your pardon -

did you hear how the 35 Classic thundered?

The grass is kempt, and as fresh as dew.

It was bargain-price down at B&Q:

the 35 Classic, and under two hundred!

Will Bellenger

It's a matter

of balance of the wrist -

hack work of course

but gratifying -

as dock and darnel

nightshade and nettle

collapse in their heaps.

There's the placing

of the feet, too -

the bracing of the torso

as you whack the machete

this way and that

horizontally waist height

into the weed jungle.

It supersedes

that moon on a stick

the simpleton sickle.

A broad blade a fined edge

swashing through greenery.

But beware wasp nests.

And beware blood.

Gerard Benson

Scarifier

No rolling stone, this one's loud in its ripping

mean take on the grass, moss-stripping,

a rake with throbbing testosterone.

And scary, going for the roots,

screaming them out, spiked boots,

relentless as a runner, power-driven.

Big country in small space.

Holding it down, going with the surge, the race,

he's all the B-movies late-night TV can dump.

Once it was silence, the gentle play

of knowing groundsman; now it's a quickie, fast away,

and no regrets. Next autumn

he'll be back, on the job; tough

on moss, but not its causes. Scary. Rough.

D A Prince

No 3693 Set by George Cowley

Hunter Davies opined that poets perform best when young. We want work from a seven-year-old Wordsworth, Milton, Keats . . . You choose.

Max 200 words, to be in by 23 August (to appear in issue dated 3 September).

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