A circle is a silly shape -
      I saw one at the sauna
      the size of a sultana grape
      self-harming in the corner.

        Taekwondo is queer for a queen,
        but someone was certainly seen
                to crush her own crown
                while belted in brown
        and murmuring "man, that felt mean!"

        A countess had such a collection of fur
        she couldn't recall what the animals were;
        among the wild creatures this caused such a stir
        that some of them crafted a coat made of her.

        A wallaby wanted to wander the world
            so wended his way to the West.
        (He relished the risk of a route off-the-road,
            so randomness reckoned the rest.)
        He bounced through the bush like a beautiful bird -
            his bounds were as bold as could be -
        but stopped like a stone at the smell of the sand
            and the smash of the simmering sea.

        A thousand years of thinking and theology
        the Christian church had crafted after Christ
        when Athanasius - naked, needing oxygen -
        was granted life, and graced his native Greece.
        The combination couldn't have been cleverer:
        the nation needed monks; he knew the land
        and founded things ferociously. They flourished,
        amassing on a mountain - sixty monasteries!

        His death was dire, dashed beneath a steeple
        that fell with force and flattened five good men;
        but - rallying - the living resurrected
        communal life. The monasteries kept multiplying
        and even now, evolving, they exist
        on Athos, at the grave of Athanasius.