Analysis of LEFTY PATTED A SHARK IN A FEEDING FRENZY
It was back about '97 or thereabouts
That the news came across the TV,
We should all head down to Williamstown
Because there was such a sight to see.
A dead Southern Right Whale had floated in
And was a few hundred metres from the shore,
And around the whale perhaps a hundred sharks
Tearing at the whale with snapping jaws.
The tourist traps ... er, tourist boats
Were real quickly in on the act,
They ferried the gullible tourists out
Within centimetres of the jaws that snapped.
Ol' Lefty reached his right hand out
And patted a Great White as it fed,
With jaws that snapped, and tore and gnashed
Upon a carcase already dead.
For days the feeding frenzy went on
And the gullible tourists went out in boats,
To pat and stroke the frenzied monsters
Who spasmed in anger at every stroke.
Belatedly the government stepped in
And made the tourist traps ... er, boats stop,
Afraid of the damage to the tourist trade
If too many tourists hand limbs snapped off.
The whole whale carcase was devoured,
In a single week or maybe slightly more,
By a hundred feeding, frenzied sharks
Just a few hundred metres from shore.
THE END
© Copyright 2021, Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Scheme | XAXA BCDX EFGX GHFH XEXX BXXX XCDC XXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101101 101101011 11111110 011110111 0110111100 01011010101 00101010101 101011101 01010101 01100101 1100100101 0110010111 11011111 010011111 11110101 01010101 110101011 00100101101 110101010 1101011001 0100010010 010101011 01101010101 1110101111 01111010 00101110101 101010101 101101011 01 101010 100100010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,155 |
Words | 210 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 31 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 118 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
About this poem
In the late 1990s a dead whale washed up near a Melbourne beach; tourist boats started taking people out to lean over the edge and pat sharks feeding
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Written on 1998
Submitted by PHIL_ROBERTS on August 22, 2021
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:03 min read
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"LEFTY PATTED A SHARK IN A FEEDING FRENZY" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/107621/lefty-patted-a-shark-in-a-feeding-frenzy>.
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