With New Year’s Eve approaching as a chore
of budgets and arrangements for the town,
no council clerk predicted that great Thor
would come in all his bulging blubber brown.
He’d voyaged from his Arctic Circle home
to Belgium and the shores of Brittany,
before he reached the shingle spit and foam
of Calshot, where he slept beside the sea.
On waking, something stirred him to return –
our hero ventured northwards through the waves,
a cold wind whipping at his sturdy stern
and mermaids murmuring from fragrant caves.
Weeks passed, until December 31st –
the sun had set in all its glory gold;
Scarborians began to slake their thirst
in preparation for the songs of auld.
The fireworks had been readied to ignite
when, suddenly, a cancel call came in –
there couldn’t be a grand display that night
as Thor was here and wouldn’t like the din.
Crowds gathered nonetheless, to see the show –
a walrus on the slipway, being himself,
till something stirred again. He had to go
to Blyth, then home, the ice, the shrinking shelf.
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Published in Snakeskin, February 2023
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