Today's poet

[Alf]

off camping for two days ...hope i can construct the tent!

A Dream


Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass me thought I lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:

'Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.'

Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, 'What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?

'I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home!'

William Blake

Better keep the thread fresh while freckle is away under canvas (she is missing the 20p off a bottle of Snecklifter offer at Morrisons as well! )

THE FAERY CHASM


No fiction was it of the antique age:
A sky-blue stone, within this sunless cleft,
Is of the very footmarks unbereft
Which tiny Elves impressed; – on that smooth stage
Dancing with all their brilliant equipage
In secret revels – haply after theft
Of some sweet Babe – Flower stolen, and coarse Weed left
For the distracted Mother to assuage
Her grief with, as she might! – But, where, oh! where
Is traceable a vestige of the notes
That ruled those dances wild in character? –
Deep underground? Or in the upper air,
On the shrill wind of midnight? or where floats
O'er twilight fields the autumnal gossamer?

William Wordsworth

[Sunbeam Alpine]

Good morning !

A taste of the sea for all beachcombers - with a poem on flotsam, jetsam and jettison (words you couldn't use to describe today's industrial junk).
This is by Keith Murray of Aberdeen - they've got a lot of sea round Scotland.

Off to track and field at York for the steeplechase today.

CONTRABAND

This morning a crab in clumsy armour
pinches pearls of spray from a lonely wave

a clash of green bottles their messages
play out wind songs over their empty necks

sing out to the damp daft bag of Dutch fertiliser
how useless this sudden washed up world is

where a carton of colour comic cuts from Milwaukee
spills its once perfectly drawn characters

to running inks escaping into the sand
their dialogues now a mystery of broken speech bubbles

a froth of shells mimic treasure
to the black tattered flag of my mind playing pirate

only the winged mastery of a single gull
balances the definite weight of the wind

and for a moment I am up there with him
snatching that invisible clean perfection.

[Derby Tup]

Nice choice SA

Perfect Day by Kathleen Jamie

I am just a woman of the shore
wearing your coat against the snow
that falls on the oyster-catchers' tracks
and on our own; falls
on the still grey waters
of Loch Morar, and on the shoulders
gentle as restraint: a perfect weight
of snow as tree boughs
and fences bear against a loaded sky:
one flake more they'd break

[Harry H Howgill]

Song of the West Men

To the far of the far
off the isles of the isles,
near the rocks of the rocks
which the guillemots stripe
with the shite of their shite,

a trawler went down
in the weave of the waves,
and a fisherman swam
for the life of his life
through the swell of the sea

which was one degree C.
And the bones of his bones
were cooler than stone,
and the tide of his blood
was slower than slow.

He met with the land
where the cliffs of the cliffs
were steeper than sheer,
where the sheep had to graze
by the teeth of their teeth.

So he put out again
for the beach,
and made it to lava
that took back his skin
to the feet of his feet,

and arrived at a door
with a tenth of a tale
that was taller than tall,
as cold and as bled as a man
from a fridge. But he lived.

The good of the good
will come this way, they say:
tattered and torn,
unlikely and out of the storm,
if it comes at all.

Simon Armitage

[Harry H Howgill]

To all hare-lovers out there. I think about hares a lot.

Lepus

Mist, asleep like poison gas
in the valleys underneath. But up here
clear skies, where the mind comes up
from the deep, lighter than air.

With a girl's fist for a head,
second-hand fur, kangaroo legs: a hare,
triggered out of the earth
in a triple-jump sprint, keeps up with the car.

Simon Armitage

[freckle]

Hi all

some great stuff on here in my absence, lovely choices by DT, Alf, SA and Harry.....I am particularly pleased to see a sea faring influence! and DT I will have to look up Kathleen Jamie, that was such an evocative and gentle poem...class!....Alf did you keep a snecklifter on ice for me?

I am sooooooo tired after my camping trip its unreal!......fresh air and 6 nippers chasing round a field= fatiguez!

bit of tennyson and bed for me..........

Now sleeps the crimson petal

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cyprus in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The fire-fly wakens; waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Alfred Tennyson

[stevefoster]

Six nippers
One freckle
Equals fatiguez
Is that some spanish footballer? Can't remember seeing him at the World Cup.
Sleep well marra:wink:

[freckle]

Six nippers
One freckle
Equals fatiguez
Is that some spanish footballer? Can't remember seeing him at the World Cup.
Sleep well marra:wink:

Thanks Steve..na night :-)

[Nathaniel Lee]

Purity.

To think i saw the complexities of my soul,
Reflected back in your eyes,
Many festering open scars born in 40 years,
Your single white light shines where our love lies.

The miasma of raging emotion pulls me down,
Your all encompassing light saves my life,
Many times i'm near the end and for this i'm truly sorry,
Your pure love saves my soul; Thank you my darling wife.

By,

The little voice inside me that loves to write but which seems to have been dulled by ever more aggressive medicine regimes.

[stevefoster]

Nice to see you back Matt, take care mate