by Jerome Betts

“English town mourning Derek the Goose to raise statue in her honour. … Watchet harbour
was the inspiration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and a
striking statue of the sailor and the albatross he shoots is a landmark in the town.”
—The Guardian

Not far from that amazing bird
Which leaves the Coleridge-reader stirred,
Derek, the wrongly-gendered goose
Who sadly suffered fox-abuse
Upon the slipway once her dorm,
May live again, in solid form,
Like regal eagles, royal swans,
And cheer up Watchet, cast in bronze.