|Wordsworth Gabe Atkinson

Readers were invited to submit a short poem including Longfellow’s line: Is haunting my memory still.

PJ Tinsley of Pongaroa writes: The bridge I have burned/The chance I have spurned/The prize that I won/The kindness undone/To the friend treated ill/Is haunting my memory still.

Chris Greenwood, Motueka: I scarce recall where we went to dine,/The name of the girl or year of the wine./But, oh my! The size of that bill/Is haunting my memory still.

Jann Ross, Glen Eden: As Nan lay winded on the grass,/She realised her mistake to ask/Just what I learned/At judo class./It is haunting my memory still.

Tony Clemow, Kamo: My long lost youth, in honest truth/is best suppressed, forgotten./I was uncouth and neat Vermouth/turned my intestines rotten./The doctor’s bill a bitter pill/which is haunting my memory still./Now, while I live I’m bound to give/my thanks to bard Longfellow/ whose poems made from hopeless jade/ the hopeful ode-ster Clemow.

Ricky Feutz, Tauranga: This Wordsworth competition is just too tough/ My efforts are clearly not good enough/Do I dare think that this time I will?/The fate of previous entries/Is haunting my memory still.

But Hamilton’s Yvonne Moosberger is the winner: Old Bradford van,/Draped with live power lines,/A bodgie, Dad called him, all broken and moaning,/A stolen safe catapulted forward,/And the spoon-like accelerator clean through his ankle,/Half a century has passed and he remains trapped there,/This is haunting my memory still.

For the next contest, send us a clerihew about any well-known composer, novelist, poet or painter. For tips, visit natureofwriting.com/clerihews

Entries, for the prize below, close at noon on Thursday, December 6.