Today's poet

[Mossdog]

Buttercups and Daisies

I never see a young hand hold
The starry bunch of white and gold,
But something warm and fresh will start
About the region of my heart; -
My smile expires into a sigh;
I feel a struggling in my eye,
'Twixt humid drop and sparkling ray,
Till rolling tears have won their way;
For, soul and brain will travel back,
Through memory's chequer'd mazes,
To days, when I but trod life's track
For buttercups and daisies.

There seems a bright and fairy spell
About there very names to dwell;
And though old Time has mark'd my brow
With care and thought, I love them now.
Smile, if you will, but some heartstrings
Are closest link'd to simplest things;
And these wild flowers will hold mine fast,
Till love, and life, and all be past;
And then the only wish I have
Is, that the one who raises
The turf sod o'er me, plant my grave
With buttercups and daisies.

Eliza Cook

[Mossdog]

Tumbling-Hair
by E. E. Cummings
Tumbling-hair
picker of buttercups
violets
dandelions
And the big bullying daisies
through the field wonderful
with eyes a little sorry
Another comes
also picking flowers

[swift]

Don;t know if this has already been posted but it looks perfect for poetry loving fell runners!


http://www.imoveand.com/stanza-stones/

[Mossdog]

Palimpsest
Meghan O’Rourke

So the days go by, and the singing at night continues.
The summer passes like horses.
Wisdom arrives on a piece of paper, blown
Through wide glass windows:
“This page intentionally left blank”.
I talk to my friends more than I used to.
I sleep less. This is the point of life:
You really care. The tendons slacken,
The fat honeycombs beneath the skin,
A fox paces in the town courtyard,
Until, passing a mirror, on the phone,
Laughing, you see yourself again
As you are, as you are not.
The snow creaks underfoot.
Touch me, I am still here,
Like the humming bee, like the mayrope
Wrapped around a tree.
The song was never mine to sing.
It lives beneath the skin.
It speaks in every bone.

This is exceptionally lovely. Thanks Freckle.

[swift]

Don;t know if this has already been posted but it looks perfect for poetry loving fell runners!


http://www.imoveand.com/stanza-stones/

It sounds like it's been a controversial project.

http://www.voiceofthevalleys.net/stanza-stones.html

Although, from reading, I think all the stones are reclaimed quarry stones that are then moved to the site. They are not attacking resident rocks.

[Mossdog]

The Shampoo

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.

Elizabeth Bishop

[Mossdog]

Helloooooooooh! Anybody thereeeeeeee? Uhmm.....not sure what's happening to this thread. Maybe it's the recent great weather and everybody is outdoors doing their outdoors thingies - like fellrunning! Just little ol' me sitting here in a grump nursing a bloody knackered left calf muscle - GRRRRRRRRRRH

Anyway, as a slight diversion to me having to mow the lawn again, in a very bad temper, here's something seasonal.


A Summer’s Dream

To the sagging wharf
few ships could come.
The population numbered
two giants, an idiot, a dwarf,

a gentle storekeeper
asleep behind his counter,
and our kind landlady—
the dwarf was her dressmaker.

The idiot could be beguiled
by picking blackberries,
but then threw them away.
The shrunken seamstress smiled.

By the sea, lying
blue as a mackerel,
our boarding house was streaked
as though it had been crying.

Extraordinary geraniums
crowded the front windows,
the floors glittered with
assorted linoleums.

Every night we listened
for a horned owl.
In the horned lamp flame,
the wallpaper glistened.

The giant with the stammer
was the landlady’s son,
grumbling on the stairs
over an old grammar.

He was morose,
but she was cheerful.
The bedroom was cold,
the feather bed close.

We were awakened in the dark by
the somnambulist brook
nearing the sea,
still dreaming audibly.

Elizabeth Bishop

[freckle]

Hey mossy i am here and i appreciated your post a lovely choice...hope your injury improves soon...i have been preoccupied with marathon training of late but looking forward to visiting my old friend poetry again :-)

[freckle]

Holyrood's shadow
Casts a divide
As sore quads preside
Over a dream of descent
Into familiar beguilement.



Trying to type on my i phone is proving tricky !

[freckle]

Geography Lesson
Brian Pattern

Our teacher told us one day he would leave
And sail across a warm blue sea
To places he had only known from maps,
And all his life had longed to be.
The house he lived in was narrow and grey
But in his mind’s eye he could see
Sweet-scented jasmine clinging to the walls,
And green leaves burning on an orange tree.
He spoke of the lands he longed to visit,
Where it was never drab or cold.
I couldn’t understand why he never left,
And shook off the school’s stranglehold.
Then halfway through his final term
He took ill and never returned.
He never got to that place on the map
Where the green leaves of the orange trees burned.
The maps were redrawn on the classroom wall;
His name forgotten, he faded away.
But a lesson he never knew he taught
Is with me to this day.
I travel to where the green leaves burn,
To where the ocean’s glass-clear and blue,
To places our teacher taught me to love –
And which he never knew.