THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE AND WORDS THAT BURN

It seems that there is a national day for everything, and today is no exception, it being, according to my local radio presenter (if not to a web search) National Poetry Day.

I am partial to a bit of poetry. My first recollection of enjoying poetry was age about 7, I would religiously visit my local library in Edmonton, London and curl up on the floor to peruse a beautifully illustrated book of Eleanor Farjeon's poetry. Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, illustrated by Hilda Boswell, was also a firm childhood favourite. I still have my much leafed and battered copy, and both the poetry and the illustrations captivated me. I still find snippets of the poems drifting into my thoughts - every time I walk by a river in fact I can't help but quote "dark brown is the river, /Golden is the sand, /It flows along for ever, /With trees on either hand,' and when I pushed my children - and now my granddaughter - in a swing, I'm likely to be heard saying "how do you like to go up in a swing,/ Up in the air so blue?/ Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing/ Ever a child can do." The poems definitely impacted me. From there I moved on to the poetry and verse of others, including Spike Milligan, A A Milne, and Cicely Mary Barker. The poems, the feelings, the humour, all spoke to me one way or another.
As I grew older I moved onto other poets - Sylvia Plath, W. H. Auden, Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou to name but a few - but today I prefer dipping into poetry collections. I can see a few such collections sitting on my bookshelves now, tempting me: Bread and Roses, Women's Poetry of the 19th and 20th Centuries; Best-Loved Poems (edited by Neil Philip); Sound the Deep Waters, Women's Romantic Poetry in the Victorian Age with its exquisite accompanying Pre-Raphaelite artwork; Poems of the Countryside with pictures by Gordon Beningfield; and The Lost Voices of World War 1, an international anthology of writers, poets and playwrights. You can't fail to find something in one of the pages of these books that will speak to your soul, will soothe or lift your spirits.

As well as reading poetry I have also been known to write it. You can blame my Dad for that. When I was about 7 or 8 he gave me and my sisters a hardbacked copy each in which to write poetry. I did. Illustrated them too. I have the book somewhere - I recall I wrote a poem about daffodils. The poems weren't very good.
I also enjoyed secondary school poetry assignments. I have two to hand - don't worry, I shan't subject you to them. They are overblown and full of teenage angst. I blush with embarrassment rereading them. One I wrote age 15 and it is called The Plea and according to the accompanying notes I wrote the poem "in a fit of depression in the middle of the night." Mortifying. However, my teacher, one Isobel Ross, has written beneath the poem "this is such a forceful poem," so maybe I'm my own worst critic. Or more likely Ms. Ross was a softy. A year later and my poetic offering for Ms. Ross was Twilight Soliloquy, written in response to Keith Douglas' Vergissmeinicht. Slightly better, though only very slightly.
Fast forward to today and I still dabble with a little poetry writing. They're not great, but I enjoy writing them - it's a great way to pour out your feelings if nothing else. Therefore in the spirit of national poetry day I shall share with you a poem I wrote in January of this year. Oscar Wilde said "all bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," so with that in mind I offer you Rubicon. Make of it what you will. Happy National Poetry Day!

RUBICON

we crossed the Rubicon.

a Rubicon you clarified.

no going back.

we've come too far,

we've done too much,

we've said

enough.

no going back, only across you said.

but

you clarified, going forward we go

alone.

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