Today's poet

Will check out your link Freckle, thanks. I listened to a couple good programmes on R4. One was about the Stanza Stones and the other was with Cerys Matthews and she read out this poem:

Severn Song

The Severn was brown and the Severn was blue –
not this-then-that, not either-or,
no mixture. Two things can be true.
The hills were clouds and the mist was a shore.

The Severn was water, the water was mud
whose eddies stood and did not fill,
the kind of water that’s thicker than blood.
The river was flowing, the flowing was still,

the tide-rip the sound of dry fluttering wings
with waves that did not break or fall.
We were two of the world’s small particular things.
We were old, we were young, we were no age at all,

for a moment not doing, nor coming undone –
words gained, words lost, till who’s to say
which was the father, which was the son,
a week, or fifty years, away.

But the water said earth and the water said sky.
We were everyone we’d ever been or would be,
every angle of light that says You, that says I,
and the sea was the river, the river the sea.

by Philip Gross

Quote:

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Originally Posted by freckle

I have found a nice poetry resource...podcasts with some great live readings from poets...

http://www.thepoetrytrust.org/poetry-channel/archive/

I liked no 8 which has the lovely poem by Jo Shapcott "Somewhat Unravelled" about her aunty with dementia which is both poignant and whimsical...worth a listen

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Excellent that freckle thanks for the pointer and I liked the Philip Gross poem Hes. I read a line the other day about light hitting the water *"Plumbed by the sun’s kingfisher rod," which I thought was pretty good!

*Sailing to an island - Richard Murphy (also check out his poem 'Seals at High Island')

Possibilities

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.


Wislawa Szymborska

Quote:

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Originally Posted by freckle

Chockstone

I brought gifts, a dream,
above the edge of an escarpement,
unfathomable drop,
I felt the fear and the desire to fall.

Another dream, my naked torso,
huge cavernous omission
sans stomach,
the wind howling through.

After that I saw holes everywhere,
In the numbness of his gaze,
In our ever dwindling bank balance,
The constantly mediocre landscape.

A pleasant vertigo followed.

At the theatre constructed of bamboo
I gazed at the distance
between my seat and the stage
My cells dizzied with the prospect,
of descending into multiplicity
buffered by a hitherto unknown ally

Resilience.

Dreams were becoming reality
A luminous hood in november rain
Began to unpeel a tender carapace
Which gathering momentum
Sent me, crashing and banging
reeling with awareness.

Landing with a bump into uncertainty
The chockstone unlodged,
it got ugly, I think...
I got ugly.
I wasn’t expecting that.

But now, after the machinations,
I catch glimpses,
here is the centre of myself,
a stillness forgotten.

Tonight my mother found some poems
written for her when I was a child
“you were always writing poems”,
I had forgotten completely,
it was a relief to remember.

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I've not been such a frequent visitor to this thread recently and reading such wonderfully well crafted and meaningful words leaves me regretting how I've been distracted by other 'life events'. Thank you for reminding me of what I've been missing Freckle. I'll try my best to redress the balance of priorities.

Chief Tecumseh's words of wisdom


So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion;
respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled
with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

NINETY-FIVE REASONS
By Renita Boyle

To exceed our limit
To pick up pace
To lose ourselves
To win the race
Blood pump – pumping through our veins
Warm sun
Hot sweat
Refreshing rain
*
To tone the body
Hone the mind
Get ahead
And leave behind
To never be an also ran
Ultra runner
Ultra man
*
To exhale angst
To inhale air
To ponder love
To live in prayer
The peace
The pride
The surge of power
To split the seconds
And reap the hours
*
To pound the ground
To beat the clock
Go the distance
Stop take stock
Who wins dares
Who dares wins
To pay the price
To purge our sins
*
To prove a point
To point the way
To live to run another day
To inspire
Invest
Improve
Impress
To better our worst
To be our best
*
To join the club
To be alone
The cloud of witnesses cheering us home
To keep the faith
To win the prize
To look at heaven in the eyes
*
No pain, no gain
No guts, no glory
To be the hero in our own story
*
To know where sacrifice begins
Believe
Achieve *
Just do it again
*
To keep our cool
To feel the burn
Fall down
Get up
Go on
And learn
*
To maintain our focus
To hope and cling
To find a different way to sing
*
Total commitment
Test of will
Enjoyment
Excitement
The thirst
The thrill
*
To smell success
Taste victory
Analyse our strategy
To champion a cause
To strive and survive
An ancient urge
A primal drive
*
To face our fears
Be tough enough
For reasons we know nothing of
To answer questions
and ask some more
To honour those who’ve gone before
*
We run to become
Step into our stride
Measure ourselves by what’s inside
To enlarge our vision of what can be
To see both the woods and the trees
*
Rustling leaves
Ripple of wind
The whisper of God upon our skin
To press on to the goal
To never look back
To meet the challenge of what we lack
*
To chase the moon
To catch the sun
Ninety-five reasons why we run

These warm muggy nghts are keeping me awake so I have joined temporarily the:


Night Workers

All you who are awake in the dark of the night,
all you companions of the one lit window
in the knuckled-down row of sleeping houses,


all you who think nothing of the midnight hour
but by three or four have done your work
and are on the way home, stopping


at traffic lights, even though there is no one
but you in either direction. How different the dark is
when day is coming; you know all this.


All you who have kept awake through the dark of the night
and now go homeward; you, charged with the hospital's
vending-machine coffee; you working all night at Tesco,


you cleaners and night-club toilet attendants,
all you wearily waiting for buses
driven by more of you, men who paint lines


in the quiet of night, women with babies
roused out of their sleep so often
they've given up and stand by their windows


watching the fog of pure neon
weaken at the rainy dawn's coming.

Helen Dunmore

Static

When you pulled the t-shirt

over your stooped head

I heard the crackle of static

and imagined the soft,

invisible fur

of charged atmosphere

over the TV's

translucent imagery.

Lights out, my blind

and all-believing hands

discover the ghost

of a smile

on your invisible face;

here you are

in your skin,

shocking against mine.

Nick Drake

Good choice Mossy :cool:

Now something I can't do at the present time except read about it :rolleyes:




Training Run

Linear. Beyond lines. Path swallowed
by the mare's tail flick of cow parsley.
Your feet pound out the hollowed
laughter of this discarded canal. A sparse lee

in the woods jolts you awake,
out of the hammered dream of the run;
it writhes with the scent of rain, aches
under a blanket of wild garlic, sun.

You have bitten, sharp as an arrow,
into the low heat of the dusk,
the deep focus, the valley's marrow.
The world is a husk

until you run it, until you find your way
over nettle creep, cow dung, hard-trodden clay.

Adam Horovitz

Long time no post but have been lurking I'm almost ashamed to say. Have had major writer's block as work has taken over and the urge to write has been suffocated :-(

However a recent return to fitness saw a spectacular return to the dizzy heights of halfway down the field at Borrowdale and I released how much I'd missed being amongst the throng at major races (as opposed to at the back feeling lonely!). I missed all the mid pack goings on more than I'd reliaed and this is the resulting ode. Hope it makes sense to my fellow mid packers...



Ode to the Mid Pack


Where mortals tread
With limited talent
but no less endeavour than those ahead

The middle pack
CVs replete with what we've done
not what we've won

The blunter end?
Less sharp here but
loose laces lose you twenty places

It's no less hard
No fewer miles, feet ascended
No less done-in than prize contenders

The chattering class
As likely to be chewing the fat
than burning it as people pass

There's no less love
From first to last
All out of bed on race day with as springier a step