Today's poet

[Hes]

I'm really enjoying the antics of the curlews and lapwings at the moment. Just found this poem about the way lapwings pretend to have a broken wing to draw attention away from their nests.

A deceit of lapwings

‘the false lapwynge, ful of trecherye’ Geoffrey Chaucer

Consider the shame of that name
even as they roller-coast over open skies,
over the secrets of ploughed fields,
keening and whooping to draw the farmhand on
away from their own open secret
nestled in its dark furrow.
See how she drags her uninjured wing
luring him from her little ones
as the boy with his bag counts his eggs,
and hatches in his mind
the money that will nestle in his purse.

Yet all over the down lands the skies are still thick
with the rush of their crossing, the thrum of their passing.

I know them by their secret names,
peewit, pie-wipe, chewit, tuefit,
the language of eggers and washmen and netters,
toppyup, peasiewheep, teewhuppo, thievnick,
telling their stories to tillers and ploughmen,
plivver, ticks-nicket, thievnig, peeweet.

And even now when a few come from nowhere
they are the sound of spring
a pied handful thrown against heaven,
the sky’s calligraphy.
They swoop and tumble for the madness of it,
and cry, wheezy and slurred,
soft and wild, joyful and grieving.

To lean on my spade
and open my heart to their wing music
and watch their looping sky-dance
and how they play with the wind,
is to want for nothing.

David Underdown

[Alf]

The last things

Of course there’s always a last everything.
The last meal, the last drink, the last sex.
The last meeting with a friend. The last
stroking of the last cat, the last
sight of a son or daughter. Some would be more
charged with emotion than others – if one knew.
It’s not knowing that makes it all so piquant.
A good many lasts have taken place already.

Then there are last words, variously reported,
such as: Let not poor Nelly starve. Or:
I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.
If there were time I’d incline to a summary:
Alcohol made my life shorter but more interesting.
My father said (not last perhaps): Say goodbye to Gavin.

Gavin Ewart

[freckle]

The last things

Of course there’s always a last everything.
The last meal, the last drink, the last sex.
The last meeting with a friend. The last
stroking of the last cat, the last
sight of a son or daughter. Some would be more
charged with emotion than others – if one knew.
It’s not knowing that makes it all so piquant.
A good many lasts have taken place already.

Then there are last words, variously reported,
such as: Let not poor Nelly starve. Or:
I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.
If there were time I’d incline to a summary:
Alcohol made my life shorter but more interesting.
My father said (not last perhaps): Say goodbye to Gavin.

Gavin Ewart

not thinking of leaving us alf? i do hope not!

pondering the meaning(s) of dreams tonight...

Dream keeper

Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

[Mark Smith]

The last things

Of course there’s always a last everything.
The last meal, the last drink, the last sex.
The last meeting with a friend. The last
stroking of the last cat, the last
sight of a son or daughter. Some would be more
charged with emotion than others – if one knew.
It’s not knowing that makes it all so piquant.
A good many lasts have taken place already.

Then there are last words, variously reported,
such as: Let not poor Nelly starve. Or:
I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.
If there were time I’d incline to a summary:
Alcohol made my life shorter but more interesting.
My father said (not last perhaps): Say goodbye to Gavin.

Gavin Ewart

That's really fantastic, best thing i've read for ages

[Mossdog]

You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen

You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen
Afraid of how you might fail yourself your
dress seven summers old is kept open
in memory of sex, smells warm, of boys,
and of the once long grass.
But we are colder now; we have not
Love’s first magic here. You come to me
Quiet as bulbs not yet broken
Out into sunlight.

The fear I see in your now lining face
Changes to puzzlement when my hands reach
For you as branches reach. Your dress
Does not fall easily, nor does your body
Sing of it won accord. What love added to
A common shape no longer seems a miracle.
You come to me with your age wrapped in excuses
And afraid of its silence.

Into the paradise our younger lives made of this bed and room
Has leaked the world and all its questioning
and now those shapes terrify us most
that remind us of our own. Easier now
to check longings and sentiment,
to pretend not to care overmuch,
you look out across the years, and you come to me
quiet as the last of our senses closing.

Brian Patten

[freckle]

You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen

You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen
Afraid of how you might fail yourself your
dress seven summers old is kept open
in memory of sex, smells warm, of boys,
and of the once long grass.
But we are colder now; we have not
Love’s first magic here. You come to me
Quiet as bulbs not yet broken
Out into sunlight.

The fear I see in your now lining face
Changes to puzzlement when my hands reach
For you as branches reach. Your dress
Does not fall easily, nor does your body
Sing of it won accord. What love added to
A common shape no longer seems a miracle.
You come to me with your age wrapped in excuses
And afraid of its silence.

Into the paradise our younger lives made of this bed and room
Has leaked the world and all its questioning
and now those shapes terrify us most
that remind us of our own. Easier now
to check longings and sentiment,
to pretend not to care overmuch,
you look out across the years, and you come to me
quiet as the last of our senses closing.

Brian Patten

what a gentle and touching poem thanks for posting Mossy

[freckle]

One Another’s Light

I do not know what brought me here
Away from where I’ve hardly ever been and now
Am never likely to go again.
Faces are lost, and places passed
At which I could have stopped,
And stopping, been glad enough.
Some faces left a mark,
And I on them might have wrought
Some kind of charm or spell
To make their futures work,
But it’s hard to guess
How one person on another
Works an influence.
We pass, and lit briefly by one another’s light
Hope the way we go is right.

Brian Patten

[nippersmith]

This Beach, Oscar Brown Jr

[Alf]

Credo

I believe in
the gingerbread man.
Who wouldn’t run,
given the circumstances?

But not the Father,
not the Son.

I believe in
forgiveness.

But not in sin.

I believe in
communion: bread wine
apples and us all
happy at table.

But not in saints.

I believe in
life. You have to,
don’t you, being alive?

But not everlasting.

Those immortelles, petals
fallen like yellow teeth
in the tomb, bearing the
form of flowers.

But not the scent,

not the breath.

Fiona Farrell

[dominion]

...Today's Poem, read to you by Geoffrey Palmer,