Season of Mists
I thank you for your view of a view of autumn, Keats
who never saw your own autumn with its actual pitfalls.
Yours was the autumn of childhood, of hope, or romance, of belief,
my mother's autumn though not that of her hardworking family,
yours was never my father's autumn, season of mists,
and yours is not mine. My autumn
for all I would like to subscribe to your lavish play,
is like yours only in single ways each year,
perhaps there are swallows making a din,
or plums and apples falling wasp-eaten, unharvestable.
There is no sickle in my vocabulary or shed,
my autumn is based more on dread of the winter
and having had so little time each summer
to tidy or attend to the garden. Last year
early snow fell on flower baskets ditched from the street
and remained both snow and baskets until the spring
leaving me two seasons behind, without strategy
for a fast approaching repeat autumn, little wonder
and no chance to make anything faintly rhyme,
such is our modern poetry and life
poem by Sally Evans
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Garden Sleeper
He slept for years out of doors
in a garden in London, his daytime
job, some sort of writer.
I didn't know him, but my path
as a young typist must have crossed his:
not only a bright colleger
but an abandoned lover, a philosopher,
a gardener without a garden
and a loafer in cafes rode to work with me.
From my north London window also
came the peck of a typewriter,
above the tired lemon shrub trees
hemmed in by dozing cats.
Trapped among statuary
lay summer-houses all year through.
[...] Read more
poem by Sally Evans
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Hiraeth and Chewing Gum: Tropical botanist Llewelyn Williams 1901-1980
The clans are splintered
Evans Williams Griffiths Price
title bearers of half-dark past,
side by side, alike
yet individual as the trees
We crossed roads not to meet
sweet hidden goosegogs,
illicit pleasures of the boys
while our sisters learned sewing,
décor and decorum.
Ach y fi! In the docks
the lame, the beggars
grimy from engine coke,
Welsh speaking, Portuguese speaking.
Tea-clippers. Hiraeth.
Llewelyn went to Assam.
Already scholar, already
[...] Read more
poem by Sally Evans
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Bewick Walks to Scotland: Sequence (a) Newcastle
These are my drawings and paintings of birds,
stored sheaves under the workbench, propped
behind casket or candlestick. I never stopped
adding to my notes, colours rather than words.
You see they are creased, I used them as templates.
Often would I stare at the blank horizon,
a carefully folded sheet in my grip,
as my mind took off, perhaps some quip
of Cunningham's ringing rhyme in my brain,
skylarks carolling upward in dry air
or quick hares starting sideways in confusion.
From Kenton or from Carter Bar,
from Cheviot, could I contemplate
a Scottish range to North or West
or both the Irish and the German main?
I was gated by hedged starry footpaths,
sea-coasts and meadows were mine
and westerly Wylam, wildlifed seclusion,
the quiet of cottaged reaches of the Tyne.
[...] Read more
poem by Sally Evans
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!