In Competition No. 2960 you were invited to submit a poem on the theme of summer in which the last two words of each line rhyme.

It was only after the entries started coming in that I realised that my sloppy wording meant that the brief was open to interpretation. In most submissions, the last two words in a line rhymed with one another, which is what I had intended, but a few of you supplied poems in which the last two words in a line rhymed with the last two in the line below. Either approach was admissible, and variety made the comp all the more pleasurable to judge. The winners below earn £25 each; Alan Millard pockets £30.

Summertime — and rain again.
Expect Gay May to be Plain Jane
And, having suffered May, soon June
Will bring a daily noon monsoon!
On dry July your bet forget
It’s ten to one you’ll all get wet,
Best wager pigs will soon fly high
Than on a dry July rely.
On weather forecasts none must trust
But to an August gust adjust,
If promised sun, you’ll soon meet sleet
And run for shelter on fleet feet.
Our summertime we, each year, fear
For bringing nothing but sheer drear,
So pray to see it long-past fast
And hope it goes with one last blast.
Alan Millard
 
It scars the heart of each hard-bitten Briton:
The weatherwoman, like a tongue-tied bride,
Gesturing words by Bulwer Lytton written,
‘Dark and stormy’. So, red-eyed, unfried,
 
We know it’s summer when our rainclouds crowd,
When even pure mouths, sighting rain, profane,
When tan-fans cry, as they’re not proud, aloud,
When desperate, we head for Spain again.
 
Yet every year, we praise September’s embers,
Cry ‘Indian summer!’, blow a fuse, enthuse —
Of the human race, we’re, one remembers, members —
And rush to buy some good-news barbecues.
 
And aren’t we all real nitwits, hypocrites?
Is any tribe more foolish, dumber, glummer?
In June, the rain will always, damn it, spit:
Let’s praise our English — call the drummer! — summer.
Bill Greenwell
 
Those days of summer are the bees knees.
You lie there basking in the bright light.
Long days of summer at your ease please.
The poet johnnies have it quite right.
 
We share the strawberries and cream dream,
And fill our goblets with a fine wine,
Where little wavelets in the stream gleam
That make the pressings of the vine shine.
 
Hot days are perfect for the cute fruit,
Likewise the beautifully styled child.
Let’s cut a caper in a zoot suit
And turn the generally mild wild.
 
Come Love, between us shall the glass pass.
Let’s unequivocally praise days
Spent languid, lounging on the grass, arse
Upturned, and through the steamy haze gaze.
John Whitworth
 
Let bright days of bare skin begin,
Iced cocktails made with gin begin,
An Erroll Flynn-like grin begin,
This season’s cool hot sin begin.
 
Homage to sea and sun begun,
Let youth leave no mad fun undone.
Age savours calmer homespun fun,
Yet joys to find young fun begun.
 
We hear the mermaids on each beach
(Unless that’s each seagull’s beach screech.)
We even dare to taste each peach,
For salt plus sweet each beach beseech.
 
A sensuality decree
Ripples sunlit sea tapestry,
Dispels ennui and breeds sea glee.
Sun and esprit set sea glee free.
Chris O’Carroll
 
Thanks be, they are deciduous, these trees.
Now in this January cold, their bare
and slender, lilting finger-twigs lift, sift,
like housewife’s flour, the falling snow, know
instinctively it is their season’s task, ask
nothing more of winter, knowing Spring’s wings
 
will sweep them green-bud-clean soon enough, rough
winds will pass, in turn the crocus focus
our sun-hungry eyes on its bold gold.
In summer will the migrant swallow follow.
 
These dainty morning footprints are birds’ words —
assurances. The snow will, I know, go.
Earth will renew its guarantee, agree
to flowers, acorns, snow beneath these trees.
Dorothy Pope
 
In a seaside summer, street heat
is dispersed in the sea, the salt, cobalt
source of buoyancy. Each beach
wears a coverlet of bodies packed intact,
but little covers this nude multitude.
What those few who aren’t bare wear
is next to nothing. The Germans just can’t wait to strip, hip
and uninhibited as jazz.
August for the glad unclad,
for those whose dreams star Ra,
for the stern naturist who loathes clothes,
for those on their favourite islands who boil, oil
and tan their bark dark.
Summer is the real deal. Peel.
G.M. Davis

No 2963: north and south

Tennyson wrote: ‘Bright and fierce and -fickle is the South and dark and true and tender is the North’. You are invited to submit a poem about either the North or the South or one comparing the two. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 24 August.