Petulance Poem by Tony Jolley

In their impatience,
In their petulance,
And with eider elbows flashing fit to fly,
They jostled and jousted
For position ‘A’ precedence
Hard on the heels of mother in her web-foot wake,
Squabbling and babbling their battle around the lake shoreline,
Whilst, some hundred or so metres beyond,
The same scene was being played out -
The mother of all petrol tankers
Steaming steadily up the forest road to Feldberg,
Followed, line astern, by her brood:
A restless road-full of four-wheeled frenzy
All overanxious to overtake:
Accelerating,
Risk-taking
Then frantically braking
Their way up the ranks,
Throwing all caution to the little wind there was
As if they were one-down and last-ditch-effort desperate
In the final few cup-final seconds.

That would be me in the morning,
But today it was ‘for the birds’.


(After watching ducks on Late Titisee (Black Forest, Germany) during the morning rush-hour and seeing the traffic on the mountain road beyond...)