A poem for today

I think I might have posted on the wrong thread somewhere on here. I can't see where my remark would fit in. Sorry.

Hollydaze that one made me well up a bit. I don't do welling up!

I think it made me think of my grandsons, and the world they will have to carry on their lives in.

Love that one merlot! I shall save it with my collection of favourites.

janerowena - I love the Sheenagh Pugh - someone sent it to me when my life was tough - I really appreciated it.

Here's another by Carol Ann Duffy and it is gentler and kinder than most of hers:

CAROL A N N DUFFY

A Child's Sleep

I stood at the edge of my child's sleep
hearing her breathe;
although I could not enter there,
I could not leave.
Her sleep was a small wood,
perfumed with flowers;
dark, peaceful, sacred,
acred in hours.

And she was the spirit that lives
in the heart of such woods;
without time, without history,
wordlessly good.
I spoke her name, a pebble dropped
in the still night,
and saw her stir, both open palms
cupping their soft light;
then went to the window. The greater dark
outside the room
gazed back, maternal, wise,
with its face of moon.

I love the phrase "acred in hours" - it says so much and is a perfect reflection of a child sleeping.

Hollydaze that one made me well up a bit. I don't do welling up! I think it made me think of my grandsons

It always brings a lump to my throat too jinglbellsfrocks It's part of what we do as parents.

I also worked with children from ages of 6 years to 16 years for around 20 years and in part of my training for both Scouts and Youth Work, I used that poem to explain why I did what I did; it has a very special meaning for me and I'm pleased it touched you too.

That is a beautiful poem Mishap.

Many thanks for starting the thread jingle - I quite like poetry

My mum and Dad would often take my brother and I on picnics and we alway seemed to be by streams - very happy childhood memories. Then, at school, we learned this poem which always brings back those childhood memories. I have it hanging on my wall at home:

The Brook

I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern, to bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down, or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town, and half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow to join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways, in little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret by many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set with willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter as I flow to join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out, with here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout, and here and there a grayling.
And here and there a foamy flake upon me as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak above the golden gravel.
And draw them all along, and flow to join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots that grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance against my sandy shallows.
I murmer under moon and stars in brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses.
And out again I curve and flow to join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.

(Lord Tennyson)

Soppy old so and so

Someone sent me a poem last year when I had dreadful empty nest syndrome even though she says she wishes she could have the chance to experience it herself, as hers show no sign of clearing off.

Walking Away, by C Day Lewis

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

I know that poem well - it is so evocative and says so much. I love it.