A short poem:
Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast.
Joyce Kilmer
Category: poetry
Fire and Ice
I’ve decided, during this time of uncertainty, to learn off by heart a short poem or fragment of a poem, every second day. Here’s today’s from Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice.”
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
I must say I too prefer fire, but thinking about it – give me both.
Daffodils
Yesterday, in the soft rain, I walked over to where we park our car. The sky and everything else seemed so grey – all a bit depressing. Then I saw them, pressed up against the trunk of a tree, a glorious clump of Daffodils. As I looked at them I was ushered into my day with a new sense of joy and vigour, and my mind turned to one of my favourite poets:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
To Be Amazed
Passed this lichen on my walk yesterday.
______________________________________
I’ve always been a great admirer of the poetry and writings of Mary Oliver. The other day I was going through some notes of mine and came across these words of hers – deeply touching. Sadly, she died in January 2019.
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
She lived these words.
Champing The Grasses
This morning I stopped alongside a fence and listened to a horse grazing in the field. It was a beautiful sound, breathy and hollow with an echoing kind of chomp, punctuated now and then by the slight sound of the grinding of teeth. It was a lovely moment and I was transported back to some of the words of a favourite poem of mine, “The Listeners” by Walter de La Mare:
Is there anybody there? said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
I loved, and still love, the phrase – “The forest’s ferny floor” – I can go on saying it forever – “The forest’s ferny floor” – and I can hear his horse in the silence champing away at the grasses.
Singing Football Fans
Football fans singing
warlike, slightly off key
throaty guttural sound
Concentrating more on the
manliness of voice
than the melody itself.
I love football and I’m always amused by the singing of the fans, especially now by the undergoing change as more and more women assert themselves in the support and playing of the game.
A Winter Sunset
A Winter’s day ends in skeletal celebration. The sounds of birdsong echoing here and there are finally stilled by small heads folded beneath protective wings, as light succumbs to creeping darkness.
