We are more than happy to criticise Facebook for all the bad things they do, but occasionally they throw up a gem or two. Yesterday, in a group that I follow, someone posted excerpts from my old school magazine from my final year and I remembered that I had a poem of mine published there - my very first published piece. In fact I discovered there were two of my poems, the one shown above and another short free verse piece which I will post on FanStory later.

I did not write another poem for more than 40 years, until I joined FanStory in fact in 2010. However, this Whale of a Tale must have stuck in my brain to some extent, even though I had long lost my copy of the magazine. In 2011 I posted on FS a much different version with an environmental flavour. It retains some of the clever lines from the beginning before it veers off to relate how man is wrecking the planet. That poem is called Grampus Saves the World and is reproduced below...

Said the whale with palpitations
To his friends and his relations
"Take me to the tropics for to die,
Ere Saint Peter takes my number
And I close my eyes in slumber,
I would like to see a flying fish really fly."

"Once we had legs to walk with
And voices we could talk with;
The mighty mammoths trembled when we spoke,
But being such lazy lubbers
We lost them in our blubbers
And now our shame in seven seas we soak."

So the whale folk soon set forth
On their journey to the north
For they meant to grant the grampus his last wish.
Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters
Left behind the frigid waters
And set off to find that fabled airborne fish.

When the great cetacean army
Reached latitudes more balmy
The patriarch once more began to speak,
"Though I feel I'm in a sauna
And there's unfamiliar fauna
I've failed to find the flying-fish I seek."

"I am feeling rather bitter
'Cos there is one other critter
Who I'm blaming for the failure of my search
He's the one who bleached the coral
With his chemicals immoral,
He's the one who left the oceans in the lurch."

"Now the climate's getting warmer
Than the curry known as korma
And the weather's either cyclones, floods or drought
I just don't understan' it
Why he's killing his own planet;
If he can't change, the world will end, no doubt."

"By Pluto, Mars and Venus,
Man's a very silly genus;
He'd destroy his home sweet home and ours as well.
If we don't find a solution
To this atmosphere pollution,
Then we're headed on the downward path to Hell!"

So the whale and dolphin kin-folk
Formed a league of fishy fin-folk;
Their Mission Statement simply 'Save the World!'
With the situation critical
Their answer was political;
An environmental banner they unfurled.

Now the pride of the cetaceans
Leads the great United Nations,
A million minions at his beck and call.
'THE WORLD HAS HALVED EMISSIONS!'
Scream the latest news editions,
And 'GRAMPUS IS THE ONE WHO SAVED US ALL!'

With the world saved from destruction
And no need for further ruction,
The mighty mammal slipped back to the sea,
Where he cruised the great Atlantic
On a tide of joy gigantic,
For at last the fishy folk were flying free.

BTW the pic shows me at the tender age of 17 in a school prefects photo. No idea why something seems to be flapping in front of my face!

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