Charlie Charlie, chuck, chuck, chuck
Went to bed with three white ducks
One died,
Charlie cried,
Poor little Charlie, chuck, chuck, chuck
Charlie Charlie, chuck, chuck, chuck
Went to bed with three white ducks
One died,
Charlie cried,
Poor little Charlie, chuck, chuck, chuck
Near
Far, we are near, meet in the rain
which falls here; gathered by light, air;
falls there where you are, I am; lips
to those drops now on yours, nearer …
absence the space we yearn in, clouds
drift, cluster, east to west, north, south;
your breath in them; they pour, baptise;
same sun burning through to harvest
rainfall on skin, there, far; my mouth
opening to spell your near name.
Carol Ann Duffy
Am Yisrael Chai
Thanks for your comment Mossdog. For various reasons I'm a very infrequent visitor to these pages, but usually really enjoy all the contributions from all the regulars. Keep up the good work!
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
No country for old men.
This ones from a local lad Edwin Waugh. Its pretty wild up there at the moment.
Oh the Wild, Wild Moors
I.
My heart's away in the lonely hills,
Where I would gladly be—
On the rolling ridge of Blackstone Edge,
Where the wild wind whistles free!
There oft in careless youth I roved,
When summer days were fine;
And the meanest flower of the heathery waste
Delights this heart of mine!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.
II.
I fain would stroll on lofty Knowl,
And Rooley Moor again;
Or wildly stray one long bright day
In Turvin's bonny glen!
The thought of Wardle's breezy height
Fills all my heart with glee,
And the distant view of the hills so blue
Bring tears into my e'e!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.
III.
Oh, blessed sleep, that brings in dreams
My native hills to me;
The heathery wilds, the rushing streams,
Where once I wandered free!
'Tis a glimpse of life's sweet morning light,
A bright angelic ray,
That steals into the dusky night,
And fades with waking day!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.
Edwin Waugh
No country for old men.
THE HUSH OF THE VERY GOOD
By Todd Boss
You can tell by how he lists
to let her
kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,
is good.
It’s good in the sweetly salty,
deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged
rain is good after a summer-long bout
of inland drought.
And you know it
when you see it, don’t you? How it
drenches what’s dry, how the having
of it quenches.
There is a grassy inlet
where your ocean meets your land, a slip
that needs a certain kind of vessel,
and
when that shapely skiff skims in at last,
trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging
left and right,
then the long, lush reeds
of your longing part, and soft against
the hull of that bent wood almost im-
perceptibly brushes a luscious hush
the heart heeds helplessly—
the hush
of the very good.
Am Yisrael Chai
Lessons in the Orchard - Carol Ann Duffy
An apple’s soft thump on the grass, somewhen
in this place. What was it? Beauty of Bath.
What was it? Yellow, vermillion, round, big, splendid;
already escaping the edge of itself,
like the mantra of bees,
like the notes of rosemary, tarragon, thyme.
Poppies scumble their colour onto the air,
now and there, here, then and again.
Alive-alive-oh,
the heart’s impulse to cherish; thus,
a woman petalling paint onto a plate –
cornflower blue –
as the years pressed out her own violet ghost;
that slow brush of vanishing cloud on the sky.
And the dragonfly’s talent for turquoise.
And the goldfish art of the pond.
And the open windows calling the garden in.
This bowl, life, that we fill and fill.
Am Yisrael Chai