Get Me Out Of Here!
G‘day from way down under, from below
Earth’s surface, where I hope to find the phone
That found a crevice when I stubbed my toe.
My selfie-taking skills, so hard to hone,
Everted me while wedging both my pins
On top of me between two rocks … I’ve been
Upended now for over sixty mins—
Though didn’t I just see you, smartphone screen,
On life support and calling out to me
For help? … Or does this blood-filled head mean I
Hallucinate, and we’re both doomed to be
Eternally apart? … So long, goodbye,
Rock-exploration selfie-taking gear …
Excuse my grief. Now get me out of here!
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. The poem was prompted by the Guardian story, “Woman wedged upside down between boulders for seven hours after trying to retrieve phone in regional NSW.”