Brock

British badgers’ new night-time routine:

Roam a golf course to land on the green,

On which Brock can dig out

Chafer grubs that the drought

Keeps off limits where hoses aren’t seen!

 

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 In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud.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 “Too many holes! Why badgers are digging up Britain’s lovingly maintained golf courses.”