Today's poet

[freckle]

Nocturne
by Wayne Miller
Tonight all the leaves are paper spoons in a broth of wind. Last week they made a darker sky below the sky. The houses have swallowed their colors, and each car moves in the blind sack of its sound like the slipping of water. Flowing means falling very slowly— the river passing under the tracks, the tracks then buried beneath the road. When a knocking came in the night, I rose violently toward my reflection hovering beneath this world. And then the fluorescent kitchen in the window like a page I was reading—a face coming into focus behind it: my neighbor locked out of his own party, looking for a phone. I gave him a beer and the lit pad of numbers through which he disappeared; I found I was alone with the voices that bloomed as he opened the door. It's time to slip my body beneath the covers, let it fall down the increments of shale, let the wind consume every spoon. My voice unhinging itself from light, my voice landing in its cradle—. How terrifying a payphone is hanging at the end of its cord. Which is not to be confused with sleep— sleep gives the body back its mouth.

[Hes]

Late December by the Sound of Jura

Red bracken on the hills
rain snow hail and rain
the deer are coming down
the lochs gripped in ice
the stars blue and bright

I have tried to write to friends
but there is no continuing
I gaze out over the Sound
and see hills gleaming in the icy sun.

Kenneth White

[Hes]

The Stags
BY KATHLEEN JAMIE

This is the multitude, the beasts
you wanted to show me, drawing me
upstream, all morning up through wind-
scoured heather to the hillcrest.
Below us, in the next glen, is the grave
calm brotherhood, descended
out of winter, out of hunger, kneeling
like the signatories of a covenant;
their weighty, antique-polished antlers
rising above the vegetation
like masts in a harbor, or city spires.
We lie close together, and though the wind
whips away our man-and-woman smell, every
stag-face seems to look toward us, toward,
but not to us: we’re held, and hold them,
in civil regard. I suspect you’d
hoped to impress me, to lift to my sight
our shared country, lead me deeper
into what you know, but loath
to cause fear you’re already moving
quietly away, sure I’ll go with you,
as I would now, almost anywhere.

[freckle]

Lovely two choices hes very atmospheric the stag one transported me which is handy on a monday morning !

[Mossdog]

A Dream Within a Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow: You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep--while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

That's wonderful Freckle - thank you. I think I may have read it some time ago, but this morning it has had a much more special resonance and encapsulated some of my recent thoughts exactly. Isn't it marvellous when you read a text, prose or poem, and it somehow seems to speak of your direct personal experiences so intimately and vividly? It's reassuring by breaking down ideas of spiritual/aesthetic isolation to know that the inner world of others' is not so very foreign and we really do share common concerns with at least a few other souls so exactly. But hey, isn't that just the same as knowing, for example, that other's also enjoy the esoteric joys of fell running.

[Mossdog]

This is the poetry thread Mossy not 'Carry on Rhyming'

Apologies Alf (and others) for my gratuitous crudities, but I was genuinely, momentarily, discombobulated!

[Mossdog]

Late December by the Sound of Jura

Red bracken on the hills
rain snow hail and rain
the deer are coming down
the lochs gripped in ice
the stars blue and bright

I have tried to write to friends
but there is no continuing
I gaze out over the Sound
and see hills gleaming in the icy sun.

Kenneth White

There are really no better Christmas cards than those conjured in our imaginations by reading such beautiful poems. Thank you.

[XRunner]

Here is the poem that was recited at the Sport Personality of the Year awards programme:

It Couldn't Be Done
By Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn't be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it";
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quidit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.

[Alf]

Here is the poem that was recited at the Sport Personality of the Year awards programme:

It Couldn't Be Done
By Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn't be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it";
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quidit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.

Thanks for posting that XRunner I didn't stay up to watch it so I missed this.

[Alf]

Late December by the Sound of Jura

Red bracken on the hills
rain snow hail and rain
the deer are coming down
the lochs gripped in ice
the stars blue and bright

I have tried to write to friends
but there is no continuing
I gaze out over the Sound
and see hills gleaming in the icy sun.

Kenneth White

Good selections from freckle and Hes. I was a bit confused with "the stars blue and bright" alongside "hills gleaming in the icy sun" ?
Or is "the icy sun" meant to mean a full moon ?