Trip
A spider's curving, shallow-funnelled hall
leads to space inside my car's wing mirror.
A gap between the glass and metal wall;
pupil in the web's inverted sclera.
Cemented bridging fibres reeled in tight,
nerved and netted radial extrusion
which dissipates in flimsy spiralled white;
tensile, sticky-droplet daubed diffusion.
Her unlit door reveals an arching limb,
poised to read the message in a tremor.
I drive. The wind speed flips from nil to grim.
Spider's lives are fraught with chance dilemma.
She nets a fly at forty miles per hour;
tearing force to leave a web in tatters.
She scrambles from the safety of her bower,
bouncing in the gale as remnants scatter.
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poem by Diane Hine
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The Carpenter Fish
The Sperm Whale's sucker-scarred head was fixed on slaughter
of dark-inked squid, twice hid in depths below.
Her blow hole flooded with draught of icy water
and froze the oil which kept her bulk afloat.
She sank, skin wrinkled, crushed in vice tight clenches,
her flexing ribs collapsed without a creak.
Her sonar click explored the abyssal trenches
and honed in on her prey with rising ‘creeeeek'.
Three quarter hour, she plundered the cold black larder,
to rise she flushed waxed oil with blood warm heat.
Her steady clicks discovered a creature harder
and massive, riding the surging ocean's sheet.
The stressed joints loudly creaked in the wood hulled whaler,
all night the rolling ocean gave no sleep.
The sore joints silent creaked in the seasoned sailor,
all night his hammock swung at angles steep.
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poem by Diane Hine
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Hanibal B.
It was round about the third century B.C.
In Carthage by the sea,
That General Hamilcar Barca's son grew up
By the name of Hanibal B.
And this boy lived with no other thought
Than elephant husbandry.
I was a calf and he was a child,
In Carthage by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was frowned upon by some
I and my Hanibal B.
With such love, that the elephant god Ganesh
Fancied him and me.
And this was the reason that in 218 B.C.
In Saguntum by the sea,
The double-dealing Romans played up, upsetting
My sensitive Hanibal B.
So that his relatives said,
‘For Baal's sake, let the elephants be!
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poem by Diane Hine
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Expectations
Our fabulous flying wheel galaxy
plows head-first through intergalactic space.
Seven thousand mile per minute taxi
bound for the Virgo Cluster's misty trace.
Our Sun bounces on gravity's tether,
speck in a collective starry flower.
Astrophysicists predict fair weather
ahead, half a million miles per hour.
A quarter of a billion year trip
carries Earth once around the Milky Way.
We plummet through the thick and thin of it;
gas pockets, dust clouds, Spiral arms' melee.
Our present course is relatively clear
and beyond the Oort Cloud's icy comets
the solar wind of our heliosphere
expands to shield the inner planets.
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poem by Diane Hine
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Satiety
Macaroons and frosted cupcakes blush
under the shining-eyed approval
of the child in the shirred sundress.
The breath of the waiting queue is hushed
by a tension-melting spectacle,
as she is swept off her tip-toes
by the debonair gingerbread men.
The relieved mother nods, smiling.
This should be the denouement:
The patisserie assistant slips
the treat into a white paper bag
and a prompt conclusion allows
bemused onlookers to share a brief
afterglow of benevolence.
Except that, the patisserie
assistant is dallying
and the child is spellbound by
a new wave of possibilities.
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poem by Diane Hine
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Sestina: Terminataur
Enveloped by the glow of bedside light,
a small child listens spellbound to a plot.
A parent tells a story quite absurd
of cyborgs, birds and dinosaurs, most mean.
A science fiction tale of keen-edged claw
and culminating fast with time machine.
‘A fearsome shrewd reptilian machine
was lurking ‘mid striated cycad light.
His iridescent scaly skin and claw
advising ‘gainst the trespass of his plot.
A grey bird hovered close; what could it mean?
and conversation flowed; now that's absurd'!
‘Tyrannosaurus said, 'You're quite absurd',
'a cyborg bird with so-called time machine',
'and plans which sound both devilish and mean',
'involving death by catastrophic light'.
'You wish to beg my pardon for the plot',
'and ask respectfully to shake my claw'? ! ? ! ? ! '
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poem by Diane Hine
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Sestina: A bird in the bamboo
The potter carried home a broken plate
and passing through a grove of tall bamboo,
some thing within disturbed the verdant sheen.
Intrigued, he stopped awhile to rest and wait.
A bird shot skyward, straight as arrow true,
turned somersaults and plunged back into green.
The bird had left the safety of the green,
to see from high the land as coloured plate.
An overview, to give perspective true.
Imprint in mind a map of home's bamboo
and then to hide and rest in patient wait,
before an insect hunt by thin moon's sheen.
The potter's wife delighted in the sheen,
of jagged shards of crackle-glazed jade green.
With supper not quite ready, while he wait,
he set about to mend the shattered plate.
When laid beside their wares of plain bamboo,
it's beauty shone and both declared this true.
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poem by Diane Hine
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Purled and Plain
A century ago or more,
a ship was wrecked in seas remote
and ‘mid the flotsam cast ashore
on limestone coast, was boy and goat.
On windswept isle of grass and scrub,
the goat was free from ship's confine,
The boy used frantic hands to grub
the remnants spat from sated brine.
Some bags of wheat, a box of tools,
he dug from sand to grant relief,
Though most the bounty lay in pools,
unreachable on distant reef.
He supplemented meagre fare
with bitter berries plucked from shrub,
And mutton birds entrapped with snare
were baked on fire, sparked by rub.
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poem by Diane Hine
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Maybe
Say, eighteen hundred thousand years ago
A lightning strike set blaze a bushy plain
And seared the seeds of life that hid below.
When cooled, a group appeared on charred terrain
And scratched the earth with thumb-opposing hands
In search of tuber, pulse or wild grain.
Alert and ill-at-ease in open lands
The scattered stones and sticks provided arms
And held aloft, some branches glowed like brands.
Then shelter bound, they took their smoking charms
To ward against their fears, yet knew not how
They held an epoch's clock within their palms.
A child played with cast-off ashy bough
And fed a spark from which a tiny flame
then sparked a torch in every bony brow.
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poem by Diane Hine
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Evariste Galois
A duel, only mist will intervene,
Two men, a line of numbers span between,
The field in which they stand, a complex plane,
Which maths equations set this tragic scene?
Not twenty-one, a headstrong youth in vain,
Would rather give his life than bear a stain,
A thwarted love and challenge made in haste,
A brilliant, yet impulse blighted brain.
Diverse mishaps of fortune interlaced;
Political conspiracy is traced,
Rejections academic, mental blot,
A father who could never be replaced.
Equations may be solvable or not,
Republicans may fall in twisted plot
Solutions may be simple or obscure,
A genius may die by pistol shot.
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poem by Diane Hine
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