Too late

I enjoyed my visit to Rotherham this weekend and presenting awards to the winners of the Mike Haywood poetry competition which I've recently judged. It's always satisfying to select a winner when you can't fault the poem in any way, as was the case with the winning entry "Dates" by Julie Mellor. I was also pleased to meet the short story judge, John Turner, and of course Graham Rippon who organised the event.

I was thinking of entering the poem below into a local competition (the theme was 'heat') but I didn't manage to edit it sufficiently before the deadline. Not to worry; every poem takes its own time. Anyway, here it is so far:

Great White Horse
As polar bears swim
exhausted after the ice,
and glaciers mourn themselves,
a great white horse begins to swell,
gathering walrus, whale and fox
as it starts to rear, to shake its mane,
ready to fling carcasses
sprawling towards the equator,
and then trample everything below
its white, frothing hooves.