A Journal of Formal & Metrical Verse


All Clear listen

Grey sea, grey sky,
Rain, in sudden volleys,
Poster, moulting from a wall,
The last of Lulu’s Follies.

Gulls’ mew, surf’s boom,
Sigh, and suck, and rattle;
Driftwood, littering the sand
Like bones of vagrant cattle….

Gone the rock, the candy floss,
The salty picture postcards,
Sea cadets with jangled tins:
“Support your local coastguard!”
Lusty cheering on the beach
At Punch contusing Judy,
Jetty crammed with crabbers and
Their cacogenic booty;
Gone Miss Lulu’s gartered girls,
The stunt men and the comics,
Making fun of wives and sex
And hair-restoring tonics;
Gone the trommelfeuer of pop,
The funfair’s brazen dazzle,
Clangor of calliope
And roller coaster’s brattle….

Full moon, rising,
Veiled, remote, patrician,
In the west a thread of light,
Magenta, yellow, titian.

All - clear - all - clear,
Winks a beacon, drolly;
Summer’s pandemonium
Is changed to something holy.

[trommelfeuer is German for barrage]

By Peter Austin


Peter Austin lives with his wife and three daughters in Toronto, Canada, where he teaches English at Seneca College. Over a hundred and fifty of his poems have been published, in magazines and anthologies in the USA (including The New Formalist, Contemporary Sonnet, The Lyric, Iambs & Trochees, The Pennsylvania Review, The Barefoot Muse, 14 by 14, The Raintown Review, The Shit Creek Review, Lucid Rhythms, The Chimaera, Road not Taken and Trinacria), Canada and elsewhere. He was December ’08’s poet of the month at the Formalist Portal and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He also writes plays, and his musical adaptation of The Wind in the Willows has enjoyed four productions, the most recent in Worcester, Massachusetts.