The Egg that Rolled

The Egg that rolled

Just an ordinary egg

Came out of a chicken

On an adventure away from the kitchen

Down cobbled road

And Shaftsbury’s Hovis hill

It bowled its ovaloid body

Driven by an inner will

Narrowly avoiding disaster

As it crossed the road

This egg was its own master

And had destiny under its thumb

Like a Prince who came out of a toad

It missed each pram wheel by inches

Then evading the horses hoof

This was a living reminder

That life lives on a knife edge

If ever we needed proof

And trundling like a lost general

In search of his egg army

He seemed self important to the untrained eye

When what guided his blindness

Was courage and faith in his Life

So there is the irony

It was just that this was a fortunate egg

In that every move he would try

Came out a sparkling success

This was no shell-shocked guy

His formaldehyde soul

Grew very cold

Like Jekyll and Hyde

He was an egg of two minds

Brought together in the oxygen of his shell

Albumin and yolk

Played some practical joke

To make him indestructible

Meant he could not die

And so on he rolled

Down the tragic road

That was his life

Being an egg that could not crack

Meant likewise that he could not hatch

So to be spared the ritual

Humiliation of the chicken

On the pecking order

His will told him to leave the kitchen

And find another abode to board on

The ocean was his calling

From when he was a foetus

And soon he came to the ocean's cusp

In a land named Lyme Regis

He pervade the sea for all it was worth

From a top a cliff top and there he did perch

But as soon as he had settled down

He found himself in an albatross' town

Where busy gulls, guillemots’ and puffins

Were roosting and laying eggs ten to the dozen

And by chance a bird named Harold arrived

And plucked this egg so that he may survive

So, on they fled across ocean swell

Well into the evening and things were going well

Then down he landed on the coast of France

And said to the egg, you are free now take your chance

So the egg trundled on down roads that were familiar

He heard the faint call of accordions, smelt onions and the sky that was vermillion

Past hawthorn nests of owls

And smiling white cows

He alighted himself upon a hay cart

Pulled by an ox

Then travelled on there

With less a wing more a prayer

Until his wanderings brought him to the Alps

Now by this time he had made many friends

There was Alphonse the fox

And Bernadette the owl

Stephanie the squirrel

And Miriam the mouse

They all were dressed in berets and striped jumpers

And the egg dressed like them too

And they all said "it suits you"

So not out of place did the egg seem now

When he journeyed up the foot hills

Of the Alps with a cow

More the traveller with means,

For many things had he seen

And made a small fortune

Displaying in a circus

Where a strong man named Roger de la Forte

Tried to crack him with his muscles

But all that cracked were the piggy banks

Of the circus goers he would hustle

So saying “fair well” to the Ferris wheel

And “so- long” to the Ring Master Monsieur Devil

He journeyed on into Switzerland's fair Climbs

And soon found the time

To visit the sights and squares of Geneva

One day he stopped by the lake's great fountain

And watched a long time thinking it as tall as a mountain

And what sprang to his egg's mind was a plan

He began to hatch

A dream that one day he might fly

So at the dead of night

He took on a gondola to alight

Amid the luscious lake of the fair town

And boldly going where no egg had gone before

He nestled himself into the sleeping fountains core

And there he waited until the next morn

When the fountain man turned the water pipes on

: Then to everyone's delight

In the crisp morning light

The egg was shot clean into the stratosphere

Now feeling less earth encumbered

This egg went through the ozone

And around the earth

He orbited like an orb

Some clever folk from NASA said

There goes a UFO, proof that life

From another planet has arrived

And much was made by Europe

Of the flying eggs orbit

And it put to bed many wars

For the people of earth saw that they were not alone in the universe

So they no longer felt lonely or frightened anymore

Then the egg left the Earth's gravity

And was pulled by positivity

Out to the furthest region's of the solar field

Where he settled on Pluto

Feeling all was going well

A miracle then occurred

This Egg who could not hatch

Finally did just that

And the first extraterrestrial chicken was born

He went by the name Prince Pluto

And spent many a year going to and fro

Discovering what else could be explored

Until finally alighting

In a cave away from lightening

He found another chicken who was earth-bored

Together they made a family

And are living still quite happily

Raising many Plutonians abroad

Last Year's Poems

A City Walk Down Under

Fitzroy to Brunswick St

Smith’s to Johnson’s Rd

The lanes I walk are many, with

Many a heavy load

Shop windows are light as a fairy’s

Though without the rains are cold

The people are blown verily

Up and down the streets of gold

Bronze statues offer avenues for the brave and bold

Snatches of photographs of bookshops

Signing autographs

A St Kilda Builder of autobahns

To a coffee house strode

Jazz in a bar off Blessington St

Rose in the arm’s of chessington meets

The mauve army of the black and white sheep

Who sail their newspaper ships to work

The metro creeps like a worm underneath

Trams as blood clots are forced up the veins of the street

Corpuscular people disembark and greet

Then form fresh tissues in cells of cafes

The city’s cognitive organs are its university and schools

Its stomach is its shopping centres and mauls

Its liver or lungs are its business districts

Skyscrapers, factories that hum

Shipping yards of cargo make for a mouth and anus

Where it imports cars, exports grains, oil miscellaneous

If it had legs it would get up and run

But this city is Melbourne

It is an octopus which spreads itself in a rock pool

Under the sun

Frost

The icicles tortuous hang

Below the bridge as if a fang

And the cold, cold air

What made man in this frozen spirit land?

What sacrosanct communion can him to Nature conjoin?

Is this Lent enough

To be reminded of his Love?

The Hawk soars above

But a shadow is what we see

What is this absence of essence

This non-being

Less than the sun, less than the big sky

It is unbeing – the ice of the land

Unbeginning Eden’s Rivers

Unbeginning time and man

In the chill depths of understanding

In the frozen waters of despair

I feel your love still surrounding

Through the ice layers I see you there

When the cold clasp of evening has gripped

The saffron sun in its palm

Then the ice winds moaning

Comes as an arctic fox

Prowling about the farm

Beneath the arch of the bridges fangs

Where the icicles of a jagged tooth hangs

Gawping at the abandoned fields

Where the moon white river runs

Solicitous in its death dance

The earth puts on its frost mask

To entrance

Life out to its last waltz

Its last moon light tango

And Jack is tripping,

Is slipping on the ring of the horizon

In its embers of hedges

And brittles sedges

It is the eye-line of a fox – sharp and cold

And I know I am too late

I wish to give up my soul

To that harsh relief

Of the fox, whose slinking loner figure

Is wily to this life’s lease

And beneath a wooded dry hedge

His eye is bright

And his heart still beats

Ode to a Toad

The toad is more akin to muddy holes,

Lies in wait beneath a mossy stone

He is Charles Atlas

Always wishing to be lifting weights

Carrying the world on his shoulders

The unfortunate thing

Like a Shakespeare’s King

Ugly as a broken plate

All warty, ill-seeming to company

Apart from one or two nights a year

When he must mate

Then out on a midnight stroll

Solipsist, the harbinger of droll

Should have been born to the Mafia

And just sat there

Stayed there with his Fairy Queen

But when she kissed him

On that midnight road

He arched his crooked, boiled, rumpled back

And remained a toad

Sidcot Swallet – Burrington Coombe Nov 9^th 2013

Down, down into the deep

Into the depths of the hills which sleep

Earthly death the temporal bowl

The bowels of the earth

The hell hole

Dark and black

Damp not cold

Warm as bark

From the fires below

Down we go, down, down, down

Down to the depths of the pits dark pole

Rock that’s round, slime and mould

Warm and black don’t lose your soul

Farther back, farther still

Reaches the slack of the Mendip sill

Subterranean rivers run

Inside the place hid from the sun

Farther back and farther still

Runs coal black the rocky gill

Breathes the stone lung

Its wet warmth not chill

Yet eerie stack upon stack the boulders fill

When so far down

Beneath the crown of the hill

When above you lay the weight of a hundred ton sill

What drives you down is an impossible will

It draws you down

To the world beneath

To cavernous clowns

Who hurl your belief

Into echoes around the hideous relief

Where a voice may drown without knowing a grief

Where the fantasy stalactites like acrobats stow

And chastened as sleeping bats roost under bows

Of roofs a thousand feet below

Below, below, to and fro the arches bend and breech the throw

They lend a spectacular frieze

As in a cysteine chapel we fall to our knees

And reach such wonder lust as only heaven must know

A man must be humble, crawl and lower like a snake

Slither on belly, on back on sides between cracks

Around bends without using his eyes

Just feel with his feet

Trust to the unknown

For it is in refusing to accept defeat

That for our greater sins we atone

Next generation of poets

http://nextgenerationpoets.com/
An interesting website relating to recently published poets and newly appreciated.

Flat Holm

https://www.pinterest.com/o7To/flat-holm-ottographic-artists-book/
The link above concerns the book on Flat Holm
www.ottographic.co.uk
This link is to Otto's website his Art books including how to order a copy of the Flat Holm Book.
After spending afive months on Flat Holm island I collaborated with the graphic screen print artist Otto to make a book about the place. It contains my word and his pictures if you are interested and they really are very nice pictures and not bad words then go to the link above and order yourself a copy or at least take a look at the samples thanks.

https://flatholmisland.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/a-poem-by-philip-gross/

Above is a link to the Flat Holm word press blog, follow it to find out more interesting news about the island