Tom's English class are studying a poetry unit at the moment. It happens to be a rather difficult unit, comprising sonnets and odes and the like. Readers of this blog (surely just you!-ed.) will know that I love poetry but I think its early introduction at this level may leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth for many students. Tom confesses to hating it already, which is a blow indeed.

The whole of Year 8 have an assessment in which they must visually present a poem in the style of those being studied. Knowing that Tom was unlikely to rise to the challenge of finding a poem, I composed a sonnet yesterday. I had been wandering up from Thai Town on Tuesday in the rain when I noticed more and more broken umbrellas in bins and in the gutter. The rain had brought them out and the wind and had done them in. This is my first sonnet so I hope you will excuse its amateur faults.

Sonnet

When icy rains come after sunny skies,
Then brollies of all kinds are in the air.
But when in whipping winds the pennants fly,
A thousand shattered frames lie in despair.
They cluster in the bins along the street,
They fall from grace in gushing gutters there
And whether eye or foot or hand they meet,
The message is ‘we are beyond repair!’

Yet once they snuggled gladly in the hand,
Or found a place in bag or case or tray.
They were the dripping leaders of the band,
Fond spindly masters of a liquid day.
Now like discarded skeletons they lie,
Closer to the grave than to the sky.