Today's poet

[Alf]

The Storm

Miles off, a storm breaks. It ripples to our room.
You look up into the light so it catches one side
Of your face, your tight mouth, your startled eye.
You turn to me and when I call you come
Over and kneel beside me, wanting me to take
Your head between my hands as if it were
A delicate bowl that the storm might break.
You want me to get between you and the brute thunder.
But settling on your flesh my great hands stir,
Pulse on you and then, wondering how to do it, grip.
The storm rolls through me as your mouth opens.

Ian Hamilton

Great choice Hes !

[freckle]

This could be one for the Druids at Stonehenge today.

Written on a Summer Evening

The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More harkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crowned.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp, -
That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go
Into oblivion -that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.

John Keats

Some great choices on here tonight with Alf setting the tone with this beautiful poem. Hes I love the Raymond Carver poem one of my all time favourite's and so true on so many levels. Harry I think i liked your version of events better than mine, short and sweet!

[freckle]

this is my summer solstice choice...not directly linked, more of a tonal thing!

Wild Strawberries

Helen Dunmore

What I get, I bring home to you:
a dark handful, sweet-edged,
dissolving in one mouthful.

I bother to bring them for you
though they’re so quickly over,
pulpless, sliding to juice

a grainy rub on the tongue
and the taste’s gone. If you remember
we were in the woods at wild strawberry-time

and I was making a basket of dock-leaves
to hold what you’d picked,
but the cold leaves unplaited themselves

and slid apart, and again unplaited themselves
until I gave up and ate wild strawberries
out of your hands for sweetness.

I licked at your palm:
the little salt-edge there,
the tang of money you’d handled.

As we stayed in the woods, hidden,
we heard the sound system below us
calling the winners at Chepstow,
faint as the breeze turned.

The sun came out on us, the shade blotches
went hazel: we heard names
bubble like stock-doves over the woods

as jockeys in stained silks gentled
those sweat-dark, shuddering horses
down to the walk.

[freckle]

Well done Fell Poet Rowers

mother Goosander
leads her seven young proudly
down denuded Wharfe

Always nice to see your haiku DT :-) lovely imagery

[Hes]

a half moon rises
yet still gilding scything swifts
the midsummer sun

[Derby Tup]

Nice haiku Hes. Still some swifts around last night above the village but they wont be around much longer


The tree is here, still, in pure stone,
in deep evidence, in solid beauty,
layered, through a hundred million years.
Agate, cornelian, gemstone
transmuted the timber and sap
until damp corruptions
fissured the giant's trunk
fusing a parallel being:
the living leaves
unmade themselves
and when the pillar was overthrown
fire in the forest, blaze of the dust-cloud,
celestial ashes mantled it round,
until time, and the lava, created
this gift, of translucent stone.

Pablo Neruda

[Harry H Howgill]

a half moon rises
yet still gilding scything swifts
the midsummer sun

Lovely Haiku Hes
I must find time to write one
Just too busy now

[freckle]

Nice haiku Hes. Still some swifts around last night above the village but they wont be around much longer


The tree is here, still, in pure stone,
in deep evidence, in solid beauty,
layered, through a hundred million years.
Agate, cornelian, gemstone
transmuted the timber and sap
until damp corruptions
fissured the giant's trunk
fusing a parallel being:
the living leaves
unmade themselves
and when the pillar was overthrown
fire in the forest, blaze of the dust-cloud,
celestial ashes mantled it round,
until time, and the lava, created
this gift, of translucent stone.

Pablo Neruda

this is sooooooooooooooooo lovely..............sigh

nice haiku hes too!

[Hes]

Cheers Freckle.

this is sooooooooooooooooo lovely..............sigh

nice haiku hes too!

[Hes]

I just realised that I hadn't posted the details of the Dufton campsite for all the fell poets off to teh Armitage gig. Here you are:

Dufton Hall Farm Campsite, the owner is Margaret Howe and her email is [email protected]
the phone number is 017683 51573