The Little White Car

     Near and far, near and far,

with minimum of brouhaha,

a frosty head and small moustache

just visible above the dash—

you’ll glimpse Geoff Page in his white car

bringing poems to where you are.

    Is there someone needs a sonnet

Bruce Dawe’s ímprimátur on it,

or are there writing class requests

for shipments of fresh anapests?

Do workshops crave more live pantoums,

do slim first vols need nom-de-plumes?

Are chefs dependent for their salads

on a seasoning of ballads?

   There Mister Page is on the job,

and animates a metric throb

from Marble Bar to Kandahar

and visits dives in Zanzibar

where sullen addicts feeding pokies

pay ingots for small change in trochees,

and does brisk trade in Neufchatel

with virelai and villanelle,

supplies a senator in Lima

ten cantos of ottava rima!

BP, take note! To cap your oil spill

nothing works like rima royal will.

Surgeons harassed by your backlogs,

paste your patients into eclogues!

    Now here’s a Swede will reimburse

for prompt supply of mint free verse,

while Masai herding goats and zebra

are Francophile for pure Vers Libre.

   Yes, Mister Page is at his task.

Where is he now, I hear you ask.

He’s zipping through the demi-mondo

charged with several gross of rondeaux,

he’s marketing new model stanzas

at universities in Kansas,

he’s lobbying the latest Thai coup

with sweeteners of odes and haiku,

he’s dropping off a brand new tercet

where an Eskimo will nurse it,

depositing a crate of couplets

for mothers coping with quintuplets

modifying old quatrains

to please the ears of aesthete Danes.

    And as he drives, his whiskers twitch

with dithyramb and hemistich,

his fingers tap in jazzy fractals

for an ode on pterodactyls,

or construe a sound more Sapphic

as he copes with Athens traffic.

   Near and far, near and far,

this commerce that’s a touch bizarre,

its bow wave of a small moustache

dispelling cant and balderdash,

Mister Page is in his car

bringing poems to where you are.