Today's poet

[N-dubya]

I am the colours of the setting sun
I am tommorrow when today is done
I am the big bang and its crunch
and the reason you eat Sunday lunch
I am a black hole that eats up stars
and the fuel you put in cars
I am the earth, grass and flowers
I give life and take the hours
I could be a rock or grain of sand
I am everything you hold in your hand

[Hes]

I am the colours of the setting sun
I am tommorrow when today is done
I am the big bang and its crunch
and the reason you eat Sunday lunch
I am a black hole that eats up stars
and the fuel you put in cars
I am the earth, grass and flowers
I give life and take the hours
I could be a rock or grain of sand
I am everything you hold in your hand

I love this! I also liked 'Towards the End', it was poignant and moving without being overly sentimental. Extremely effective.

[Hes]

This might be a tad religious for some tastes.

I am the Great Sun

(From a Normandy crucifix of 1632)
by Charles Causley

I am the great sun, but you do not see me,
I am your husband, but you turn away.
I am the captive, but you do not free me,
I am the captain but you will not obey.
I am the truth, but you will not believe me,
I am the city where you will not stay.
I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,
I am that God to whom you will not pray.
I am your counsel, but you will not hear me,
I am your lover whom you will betray.
I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,
I am the holy dove whom you will slay.
I am your life, but if you will not name me,
Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

I like this too, I think you could use a lot of the lines and apply it to whatever is the most important thing to you...whether that is God, nature, love etc...and it becomes a poem about when we briefly lose faith in these things.

[Hes]

Try this as a bit of light relief Emmilou

Nigh on 40 years ago, shortly after I started my first job in a cartographers office in Sunderland, I was told by one of the old hands there that “Map-reading isn’t a skill, it’s an belief”. This past year of my fellrunning comeback has meant that I’ve repeatedly explored that belief - not least on the Hobble last weekend.

Here’s a bit of Miroslav Holub that I use to reassure myself.

Brief reflection on maps

Albert Szent-Gyorgi, who knew a thing or two about maps,
by which life moves somewhere or other,
used to tell this story from the war,
through which history moves somewhere or other:

From a small Hungarian unit in the Alps a young lieutenant
sent out a scouting party into the icy wastes.
At once
it began to snow, it snowed for two days and the party
did not return. The lieutenant was in distress: he had sent
his men to their deaths.

On the third day, however, the scouting party was back.
Where had they been? How had they managed to find their way?
Yes, the men explained, we certainly thought we were
lost and awaited our end. When suddenly one of our lot
found a map in his pocket. We felt reassured.
We made a bivouac, waited for the snow to stop, and then
with the map
found the right direction.
And here we are.

The lieutenant asked to see that remarkable map in order to
study it. It wasn’t a map of the Alps
but the Pyrenees.

Goodbye

Brilliant!!! I can so relate to that. I am thinking of getting a map of Aran for when I run Jura this year!

[Hes]

Not visited in here for far too long but insprired after reading a poetry book last night, however Mossdog and Hes especially have made me cry! It's too dangerous in here!!

Sorry for making you cry...if you can be bothered wading back a few thousand posts (!) you'll find a load of daft poems on biscuit porn, that should reassure you that it isn't all doom and gloom here.

[emmilou]

Sorry for making you cry...if you can be bothered wading back a few thousand posts (!) you'll find a load of daft poems on biscuit porn, that should reassure you that it isn't all doom and gloom here.

oh it wasn't doom and gloom!! I'm just soppy!!!

[Nathaniel Lee]

My Life.

I am there at the beginning,
I am there at the end,
I am the pain that fight with everyday of your life,
I am the part of you that cuts each day with a knife,
I am the scars that run down your wrist,
I am the siren call of death that you can't resist,
I am the relief that you feel as you start to fade,
I am the slow pooling blood in which you are laid,
I am wonderment as you are passing on,
I am the answer to the question now you are gone.

By Herakles

[Harry H Howgill]

Try this as a bit of light relief Emmilou

Nigh on 40 years ago, shortly after I started my first job in a cartographers office in Sunderland, I was told by one of the old hands there that “Map-reading isn’t a skill, it’s an belief”. This past year of my fellrunning comeback has meant that I’ve repeatedly explored that belief - not least on the Hobble last weekend.

Here’s a bit of Miroslav Holub that I use to reassure myself.

Brief reflection on maps

Albert Szent-Gyorgi, who knew a thing or two about maps,
by which life moves somewhere or other,
used to tell this story from the war,
through which history moves somewhere or other:

From a small Hungarian unit in the Alps a young lieutenant
sent out a scouting party into the icy wastes.
At once
it began to snow, it snowed for two days and the party
did not return. The lieutenant was in distress: he had sent
his men to their deaths.

On the third day, however, the scouting party was back.
Where had they been? How had they managed to find their way?
Yes, the men explained, we certainly thought we were
lost and awaited our end. When suddenly one of our lot
found a map in his pocket. We felt reassured.
We made a bivouac, waited for the snow to stop, and then
with the map
found the right direction.
And here we are.

The lieutenant asked to see that remarkable map in order to
study it. It wasn’t a map of the Alps
but the Pyrenees.

Goodbye

That's fabulous. And very relevent to fell running too. There is more than one person out there who carries exactly the same map whatever race they are running.

[freckle]

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever

Rabindranath Tagore

According to 'Old Poetry' web-site this was Audrey Hepburn's favourite poem and Gregory Peck read it out at her funeral

i love this in particular the line about old love in shapes that renew and renew...lovely

[freckle]

Towards the End

She was like a dodgem car stuttering, low
on sparks, all stops and starts a walk of a
hundred yards or slightly less could test
her heart and all its gubbins. Smoking started

at the age of nine, she never
stopped or tried to quit ever. Even
when early on in her career, her dad,
my great grandad locked her in the cellar
or bogey hole, with a pack of fags and a
box of matches. Everyone was lit and
smoked in turn, till she was ill. After eightyone

years a full patina of nicotine
on the index and middle finger is no more
than a give away of a dirty habit. The real
trouble was the rattling in her shoes.
The body decaying; her very toes
had blackened and shook loose, like
those of a mishapped mountaineer.

Death itself is instantaneous, dying
can take, minutes or years. It took
six months of refusing food, developing
bedsores and fits whilst possessed
under the spell of morphine. The end
was not sudden, unexpected or unseen
and however much grief you bare it
does not compare to the relief.

this is really moving n dubya i am a bit speechless but i really like it