Benchmark
Brits in Scarborough check all their sums:
England’s bottom-most benchmark becomes
Nigh imposs to get beat—
‘Cos a long railway seat
Held two hundred and thirty nine bums!
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and other journals. The poem was prompted by the BBC story, “Record crowd fills ‘world’s longest railway bench.”