Over the summer months Christine Roberts is delighting and entertaining us with her chess poems. This one covers the battlefield over the chess board!

Always the battlefield for the game,
whilst armies change, I stay the same.
Use me for draughts, though I confess
I prefer to be the site of chess.

64 squares in rows, all told,
I’m rigid, though sometimes I fold.
I alternate, one black, one white,
back and forth, from left to right.

Chess pieces start rows A and H
with pawns in front to segregate.
My centre squares, I’ve realised,
are areas quite highly prized.

So, set me down, game commence,
watch me star in tournaments.
As pieces fall and pawns deflate,
I look the same when it’s check mate!

Copyright © Christine Roberts 2021