soundofmanywaters

This is a reworking of a poem that appeared earlier on Sound of Many Waters. I've long felt that its last stanza, in which my journey comes to rest under the roots of the oak, belonged in it but was not the place to end it, because I want to share a better hope in these poems.  Spinney When I was a child there was a chestnut. Her candles blazed all May long, giving way To tawny rubies casked in spiky green, Her low-arced branches luring me to climb and conquer.   Later it was a beech tree I loved best. My auntie had one growing by her gate. Though she had many shapely arms, she called it Venus de Milo for her voluptuous torso And sheeny skin.   Next came a birch, slender silver Barred with elegant black, bronze too at her wrists, yet tough as tundra, And in season a shimmer of shivering, defiant gold.   There were many more saplings for my spinney, Hornbeams and hollies, lissom willows, Doomed tragedies of elm and ash, Even a...

I've been a bit low on inspiration lately, sorry for the lack of new poems appearing on this blog in the last couple of months. So here's an old one, appropriately enough about the difficulties of writing... And yes, I did travel to work every day on the London Underground in those days. A New Orpheus The Muse is a flighty bird and proud Who stays half hidden in her high cloud, Will not flit down and talk to those Who would be poets in jagged prose And splintered lines of different sizes. They always lack her sweet surprises, For poetry, they say, can’t be When God is dead, man lost – i.e. In an age like ours. Those folks with brains Too big to see their own chilblains At freezing altitudes of thought She plain dislikes, and says they ought To learn truths they’re not looking for In paradox and metaphor That hint of greater relationships… And yet she leaves in dull eclipse Good Christian me, who would set right Her tricky principles of flight. ...