I am combining the daily rhyme for NaPoWriMo with a 55-word short story challenge on the theme of Lighthouse:
Lighthouse-keeper had seen
Two lights of red and green;
Got on radio
To aircraft so low:
‘Go up! Straight ahead, lighthouse light!’
Pilot responded, in fright,
‘Have you in sight
I’m pulling up, right!’
Dived, left, into sea…
But how can that be?
‘Red to left shows the clown
Must have been flying upside down!’
(A trick question in a Pilot’s Exemption Certificate Course exam which Much Better Half and I once took said:
‘Over the bow you have a red light to port and a green light to starboard on a steady bearing. What are you seeing?’
The answer could only be a seaplane flying upside down on a collision course. If it were a boat upside down, the lights would be underwater.)
© Colonialist April 2013 (WordPress)
Colonialist's Blog 
Excellent, as always!
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Thanks!
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Just as well I’m not a pilot
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All a matter of training! 🙂
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You’re too clever for me. I’m all confused 😯
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Good poem Col, much to OH’s frustration I can never remember which is left and which is right which has made for some interesting dinghy sailing.
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That can be useful. Much Better Half, as crew, on occasion yelled, ‘Starboard!’ to another yacht which had the right-of-way with such conviction that they would promptly go about – and then curse.
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I knew port is red. We have a bottle in the cupboard.
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Good stuff. And one isn’t too particular regarding the vintage, in bad weather.
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Sounds like he landed in the drink! **splash**
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That he did! He simply climbed the wrong way!
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Either that or you’re looking in a mirror, or at a reflection in a window?
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Seeing your own lights? Indeed, that could be. Never thought of that possibility!
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Very neat poem though 🙂
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Thanks! A little jerky from needing to double as a 55-word flash fiction story!
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This is why I never decided to train to be a pilot, way too confusing for me!
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I do seem to have lost everyone on this!
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I wouldn’t make a good pilot or lighthouse man. 😦 All very confuscating.
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As disorientated as the poor pilot? 🙂
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A Flying Dutchman??
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I think it would require a race with less intellect …
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Good confusing poem…
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It did need rather a lot of explanation!
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An alien?
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With navigation lights?
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Of course how else ?
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Yep and if the clown was there, he would be drowning by this stage and you lost me at “trick question” already. 😛 Love the poem by the way. *hugs*
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So port is left and starboard right? And the green light is where exactly?
nautical terms – quite difficult for this landlubber!!
Cute poem nevertheless Col 😉
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Navigation lights: port is red and green is starboard. You only see those from the front (both) or one or the other from the side. When you get behind the middle of a ship or aircraft they vanish and are replaced by a single white light. So the colours mean look out, but white means it is going away from you.
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Thanks Col 😉
Always good to know as many things as possible…
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