I write this piece on Friday or on Saturday

But mostly on the latter day

Which I like to call my satire day

But satire work point blank refuses

With no support from any muses

To give me verse at any time

And Forest View does seldom rhyme

Some poets’ names I never knew

Like nineteenth century Catherine Drew

Whose painted face adorns the broad

Fresh painted walls of Cinderford

And one can read her sad lament

Appears in this short document

She cries :’And tho’ you upbraid me, when I have got time, To the end of my days I will scribble a rhyme’

And in her anthology her Forest roots made her sing

‘In a little thatched cottage, as free as a King, I was born and was bred, in the Forest of Dean, I know nothing of town, or what it did mean’

And ‘So the Forest of Dean is my native, my own I prefer to either the city or town, The days of my childhood I trace in delight When I roved on the green on a moon shining night’

And there’s many another forest bard

Without researching very hard

Who’s now emerged in Forest View

Will Harvey and Edward Thomas to name but two

Will Harvey, while prisoner of war

Celebrated crazy ducks he saw

Back in England, in a cricket match,

He described the taking of a catch

And compared the flight

Of cricket ball with wartime gelignite

Robert Frost, if I’m not mistaken

Wrote about the road not taken

And in his great poetic voice

Explained the great effects of choice.

When Edward Thomas’ train stopped at Adlestrop station

He used it for serious versification

And he developed some thoughts on the unwanted stop

And created for ever the fame

And the name

Of ‘Adlestrop’

Whereas my old mate Ambrose

Is very good at verse and prose

I often get quite jealous

For he does refuse to tellus

The secret of his art

So I’ve now given up on verse

As my rhymes get quite perverse

And often even worse

The moral of this sad discourse

Is ‘stick to writing simple prose’

And do not tread on poet’s toes

That’s how it goes.

Until the time

I feel a rhyme

And another Forest topic came

And I’m in doggerel land again.