Today's poet

[Hes]

Scops Owl

At night I lie without you
under a pelt of darkness
heavy with cypress
ragged with goat-cries.
Under the white moon's Roman coin
dogs are barking from distant farms
with little rips of sound
that stone walls catch, throw back.
All this he draws like silk
through a gold ring
into a single woodwind note.
A true and level flutingtongued and sweet
I picture travelling
through night's horizons
north, to where you sleep.

Anna Crowe

How gorgeous! Freckle and Mossdog, sorry I didn't make the thread last night, I'd love to have been part of your exchange, some brilliant choices. Instead I was cutting small bits of lino to form illustrations of the Pennines....

[Hes]

Peakland dipper pair
busily prepare their nest
above River Noe

Lovely DT. This time of year is so wonderful, small birds and animals getting busy with the business of finding mates, nesting and making babies! Friskiness is in the air...

[Hes]

Our poetry thread has captivated another person.

We will need Hanneke to translate the haiku.

An example:

Sneeuw
In de sneeuwnacht roept
plots een uil de stilte stuk.
Een vreemde vogel.

Hes will enjoy it!

I did enjoy it (thanks Mossy for the translation) and the article. Interesting guy. Thanks XRunner.

[Derby Tup]

Lovely DT. This time of year is so wonderful, small birds and animals getting busy with the business of finding mates, nesting and making babies! Friskiness is in the air...

Friskiness in the air!

[Stef F]

What a weekend - first camping of the year was fantastic and as an added bonus I survived the Edale Skyline

Woken gently to
sounds of the lone curlew call,
a charm of Goldfinch

[Hes]

What a weekend - first camping of the year was fantastic and as an added bonus I survived the Edale Skyline

Woken gently to
sounds of the lone curlew call,
a charm of Goldfinch

Congratulations on Edale Stef and the haiku is gorgeous!

[Hes]

graphite covered hands
perusing poetry books
marking favourites

[Old Whippet]

Friskiness in the air!

indeed DT - in suprising places

High up the Langstrath
a frisky frog manages
to locate a mate

[Alf]

Scops Owl

At night I lie without you
under a pelt of darkness
heavy with cypress
ragged with goat-cries.
Under the white moon's Roman coin
dogs are barking from distant farms
with little rips of sound
that stone walls catch, throw back.
All this he draws like silk
through a gold ring
into a single woodwind note.
A true and level flutingtongued and sweet
I picture travelling
through night's horizons
north, to where you sleep.

Anna Crowe

Great choice from the frecklemeister That's one of those selections that makes you immediately want to google the Poet's name and works.

The Impossible

Chain-Walk, Kincraig
for Iain

Who knows what we can do? When friends believe
In us, the chrysalis grows tight and splits
And, struggling out, we fly. Your basalt cliffs
Rose up that day like panic. I swallowed hard,
So scared, my two-day migraine slid away.
Yet when I grasped the chains, they were all muscle,
A warmth of linked hands. Then into an hour’s
Hauling, up and over-ing, inching downwards,
Toes socketing home, holdfasts to hand.
An afterwards, next year, that you’ll remember –
Kestrel leaning upon warm cliff-top air,
Nonchalant grasses, and the glittering Forth.

Anna Crowe © 1997
from Skating Out of the House (Peterloo 1997)

[Derby Tup]

Journey's End


When the long day's tramp is over, when the journey's done,
I shall dip down from some hilltop at the going down o' the sun,
And turn in at the open door, and lay down staff and load,
And wash me clean of the heat o' day, and white dust o' the road.

There shall I hear the restless wind go wandering to and fro
That sings the old wayfaring song — the tune that the stars know;
Soft shall I lie and well content, and I shall ask no more
Than just to drowse and watch the folks turn in at the open door.

To hail the folk I used to know, that trudged with me in the dust,
That warmed their hands at the same fire, and ate o' the same crust,
To know them safe from the cold wind and the drenching rain,
Turn a little, and wake a little, and so to sleep again.


Cicely Fox Smith