Pincushion, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Like pirates we landed
And walk the plank
Landing on the beach

Half moon shaped
Glimmering glass water
We walked through the shark’s mouth

And we found a path
A bit sandy, and stony
We ended up at a gift shop

It had a tiny bar, t shirts
Flip flops, picnic tabletops
Knick knacks, magnates

We chomped down
Under the sun peaking through
The tropical greenery, trying to sneak in

And there was a small grassy lawn
Lining the path to our left
It dared not invade the sand

But through the lined garden
Of the path, and the lawn
Two our left,

This little lumbering thing
Wobbling while it was walking
Not a care in the world it seemed

It could have curled up
In a tiny ball, like a hedgehog
But it wasn’t one of those at all

It was no bigger
Than a mandarin orange
With an anteater’s nose

In miniature size
Looked like something
Mom pulled out of her sewing bag

Little cute pincushion
Not worried about us at all
Foraging through the grass

In the midday sun
I couldn’t think of any
Predators who would want one

I wanted to take you home
But my cat, I don’t think
He’d have been a fan of that.
(end)

My friend and I got to visit The Great Keppel Island just off the coast of Yeppoon in Queensland Australia. You literally have to walk down a metal plank onto the beach. And to get to the garden pathway to walk around the island, we had to go through a fabricated fake shark’s mouth.

We stopped on our walk at a little bar/gift shop, it was about midday. We got done eating and my friend had his camera out taking pictures of the tropical flowers and he spotted an Echidna. Neither of us had ever seen one before. I thought it was absolutely adorable.