Today's poet

[Mossdog]

Alice Oswald's always been a favourite for me Hes - thanks for those excerpts.

[Mossdog]

Spent the morning atop Wildboar Fell, Swarth fell and Baugh fell giving the new footwear a bash.....simply glorious weather again, sunshine and a gentle cooling breeze, and as usual I was able to feast on the entire 'secret' landscape uninterrupted - heavenly.

Bare Grip's premier
skylarking on Wildboar fell
soul to sole smiling

[Mossdog]

Your Name

Stirring, I turn, letting your name
tumble from still sleep-bound lips onto my pillow
where it lays, warming today's first thoughts
it's power lightens, fades the stalking loss of night
sears the fears of absence, the years of silence
- this is love, your name, your image
lays close
as real as landscape,
and that smile, those blue eyes of acceptance
I'v woken into my dream,
the unspoken secret of a life time's heartbeats
a 'Lovely Day' made true,
your name.

[Mossdog]

hey you introduced me to someone new! thanks hes!

i think there is so much more than meets the eye with this one.....


The Decent
William Carlos Williams

The descent beckons
as the ascent beckoned.
Memory is a kind
of accomplishment,
a sort of renewal
even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places
inhabited by hordes
heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds—
since their movements
are toward new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned).

No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since
the world it opens is always a place
formerly
unsuspected. A
world lost,
a world unsuspected,
beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness .

With evening, love wakens
though its shadows
which are alive by reason
of the sun shining—
grow sleepy now and drop away
from desire .

Love without shadows stirs now
beginning to awaken
as night
advances.

The descent
made up of despairs
and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening:
which is a reversal
of despair.
For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
what we have lost in the anticipation—
a descent follows,
endless and indestructible .


ps an interesting analysis can be found here...
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps...thedescent.htm

Goodness Freckle - what a stunning poem, and the link to the analysis simply added to my appreciation. Profoundly philosophical, yet in it's subject matter central to the very inescapable exigencies of real life that most of us will have to face in one way or the other.

[Mossdog]

Somersby Brook

This brook was the pulse of his being;
I know; I have seen it,
An insignificant affair, stroking the grasses
In the drab fields.
But when the land is flat and there is nowhere to go,
No hill steep enough to sharpen the mind,
No wood darkening to an old legend,
One ignores the whole and prizes the parts,
Making a forest of the green cress,
A town of the trees’ roots.

So it was then in his young life
Beginning at Somersby;
His thoughts were attuned to the brook’s rhythm;
Its lithe movements, scaly with sunlight,
Startled his mind with a new joy.
And in the dark, if he leaned from his window,
It was as though the night spoke
In shrewd whispers –
And all because of this mean runnel,
Toying idly with a few stones,
Stones that became words in his verse,
Poised and polished in the mind’s stream.

R. S. Thomas

There are some wonderful images and ideas contained in this poem Alf, and it's a new one for me again. You 'guys' became quite metaphysical last night it seems!!!

[Alf]

Your Name

Stirring, I turn, letting your name
tumble from still sleep-bound lips onto my pillow
where it lays, warming today's first thoughts
it's power lightens, fades the stalking loss of night
sears the fears of absence, the years of silence
- this is love, your name, your image
lays close
as real as landscape,
and that smile, those blue eyes of acceptance
I'v woken into my dream,
the unspoken secret of a life time's heartbeats
a 'Lovely Day' made true,
your name.

Now that's a very good poem Mossy Well done!

[Alf]

This is an excerpt from Alice Oswald's excellent poem/book Dart:

woodman working on your own
knocking the long shadows down
and all day the river's eyes
peep and pry among the trees

when the lithe water turns
and its tongue flatters the ferns
do you speak this kind of sound:
whirlpool whisking around?

Listen, I can clap and slide
my hollow hands along my side
imagine the bare feel of the water,
woodman, to the wrinkled timber

That is good Hes I will have to check that book out. I actually googled one of the lines and the seventh hit in the list was "Todays Poet"......fame at last!

[Alf]

A beautiful poem (originally posted by freckle but well worth another posting) Douglas Dunn wrote about his dead wife and is very reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's poems about his dead wife (see freckle's other post http://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/showt...all#post335785 )

Land Love

We stood here in the coupledom of us.
I showed her this – a pool of leaping trout,
Split-second saints drawn in a rippled nimbus.

We heard the night-boys in the fir trees shout.
Dusk was an insect-hovered still water,
The calling of lost children, stars coming out.

With all the feelings of a widower
Who does not live there now, I dream my place.
I go by the soft paths, alone with her.

Dusk is a listening, a whispered grace
Voiced on a bank, a time that is all ears
For the snapped twig, the strange wind on your face.

She waits at the door of the hemisphere
In her harvest dress, in the remote
Local August that is everywhere and here.

What rustles in the leaves, if it is not
What I asked for, an opening of doors
To a half-heard religious anecdote?

Monogamous swans on the darkened mirrors
Picture the private grace of man and wife
In its white poise, its sleepy portraitures.

Night is its Dog Star, its eyelet of grief
A high, lit echo of the starry sheaves.
A puff of hedge-dust loosens in the leaves.
Such love that lingers on the fields of life!

DOUGLAS DUNN

[Hes]

That is just beautiful Mossy, I particularly like the lines that I've emboldened (have no idea if that is a word ).

(and I loved your haiku too, glad you had a good run)

Your Name

Stirring, I turn, letting your name
tumble from still sleep-bound lips onto my pillow
where it lays, warming today's first thoughts it's power lightens, fades the stalking loss of night
sears the fears of absence, the years of silence
- this is love, your name, your image
lays close
as real as landscape,
and that smile, those blue eyes of acceptance
I'v woken into my dream,
the unspoken secret of a life time's heartbeats
a 'Lovely Day' made true,
your name.

[Hes]

Alf...that is a really moving choice. Thanks for posting it.