Tiny Spatchcock
The wealthy London diner has a grouse:
It’s that he hasn’t. Mayfair’s cooking pot
Needs game birds flying at the country house,
Yet this year’s birds are finding it too hot.
Since Twelfth of August, when the shoot began,
Plush restaurants have struggled to secure
A tiny spatchcock for the wealthy man
To boast his dinner’s fresh from upland moor.
Chefs, quailing at lost profits, might reflect:
How many socialites, when plied with wine,
Can tell grilled grouse from spatchcocked mice, bedecked—
Once tails have been removed—with superfine
Concoctions of bread sauce? … Throughout the shoot,
Keep mousetraps handy for a substitute!
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and other journals. In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud. The poem was prompted by the Guardian story Top chefs find grouse in short supply as wildfires add to heat over shoots