Tag Archives: acrostic poem

Acrostic sonnet: Mike Mesterton-Gibbons, ‘Veronika The Cow’

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(Science has reported the first evidence in cattle of
using a single tool for multiple purposes, a skill 
previously seen only in humans and chimpanzees.) 

Veronika the cow can wield a broom,
Enabling her to scratch her back and breast,
Relieving itch. This Austrian, for whom
Old age brings fame, is now the manifest
New poster-girl for multi-purpose tools
In use by livestock, widely thought to lack
Keen intellect. But what if they aren’t fools
And, copying Veronika, attack
The status quo with brooms held high – if smart
Hoofed animals refuse to constitute
Earth’s humans’ prime rib roast supply and start
Campaigns to claim their basic right, pursuit
Of happiness? . . . Will humans have a beef
With Austria’s tool-user-cow-in-chief?

*****

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons writes: “Yes, Veronika uses opposite ends of the broom for different purposes. There’s a nice video of her in action on the Science website where I first read about her. The article and video are here: https://www.science.org/content/article/no-bull-austrian-cow-has-learned-use-tools“

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England.  His poems have appeared in Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online (where this poem was first published), the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and other journals. Links to all these poems can be found at  https://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/wordplay.html. In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud.

“Veronika’s tooling technique and targeted areas (cow tools)” by Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró, Alice M. I. Auersperg is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Using form: Acrostic Sonnet: Mike Mesterton-Gibbons, ‘Lonely As A Cloud’

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Life’s trials left me lonely as a cloud
On high until I found some daffodils,
Not in an adventitious golden crowd
Extending by a lakeside near some hills
Like Wordsworth in his poem, but below
York’s city walls on sloping grassy banks,
Arrayed in row upon enticing row.
So I plucked half a dozen from the ranks
And clasped them and, like Wordsworth, felt a rapt
Companionship that filled me with renewed
Light-heartedness … until a copper tapped
On my left shoulder and rebuked me—”Dude,
Unlicensed flower picking’s stealing”—then
Detained my blooms … to leave me lone, again.

*****

Editor’s comment: Mike Mesterton-Gibbons has produced a Shakespearean sonnet acrostically spelling out the title and theme that references one of the best-known poems in the English language. A full discussion of Wordsworth’s original (text, background, modifications, reception, various photos, etc) is in Wikipedia – including the suggestion that Wordsworth originally came up with “I wandered lonely as a cow” until his sister Dorothy told him “William, you can’t put that.” But rather than Wordsworth’s blissed-out ending, Mesterton-Gibbons goes full circle to a rueful police-induced return to loneliness.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to England to live in York, where he once attended university after going to school in Cumbria near the Lake District.  His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review (where this poem was first published), the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly.  Links to all these poems can be found at  https://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/wordplay.html

Photo: “York: City Walls and Daffodils” by jack cousin is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Rob Stuart, ‘Hitchcock Acrostic’

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My looming silhouette, obese and bald,
As well as my distinctive semi-slur
Still resonate, and even now I’m called
The cinema’s preeminent auteur,
Epitomising what François Truffaut
Revered: a moviemaker in control
Of everything on screen. I ran the show:
Finessing scripts and casting every role,
Selecting music and the mise-en-scène.
Unwilling as I was to look beyond
Simplistic plots that featured guiltless men
Plus pretty women (preferably blonde)
Entangled in intrigues, they all had doubt,
Not payoffs, situated at their heart:
Set bombs a-ticking, tension builds throughout,
Explode them and you blow it all apart.

Rob Stuart writes: “This poem was previously published in ‘Snakeskin’ although I have revised it since.

“Is this my best poem? Probably not, but it’s certainly the fiddliest I’ve ever written and consequently the most satisfying to have (perhaps) finished. A rhymed acrostic gives one very limited room for manoeuvre as it imposes constraints at both the beginning and end of each line, and this led to all manner of contrived rhymes and clunky word choices in my early drafts, including the version that was originally published a few years ago, and I have literally spent hours poring over lists of verbs beginning with a ‘u’ and synonyms for ‘suspense’ in the search for suitable replacements. I may yet go on to revise the poem further (I’m still not sure that the second to last line quite works), but I think it reads pretty damned well now. It’s a dinky little lesson in film history, too.”

Rob Stuart’s poems and short stories have been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and webzines including Ink Sweat and Tears, Light, Lighten Up Online, M58, Magma, New Statesman, The Oldie, Otoliths, Popshot, The Projectionist’s Playground, Snakeskin, The Spectator and The Washington Post. His work appears in the Potcake Chapbooks ‘Careers and Other Catastrophes‘ and ‘Wordplayful‘. He lives in Surrey, England with his family.

http://www.robstuart.co.uk/