Tuesday Poem: I was meant to stride through
September 28, 2022
I was meant to stride through armour jingling, a whole orchestra of metal bits, cymbals and triangles. But something made me rest in the still, mushroom strewn wood, dank and smelling like dogs’ paws. Taking off the shiny carapace, I wriggled into the moss, napped, awoke to a gnome stealing gauntlets, to store in some illicit cavern. I decided not to give chase. Let him take what he wanted. Rolling over, my moist pillow seemed to release rich spores imbuing me with memories, indistinguishable from dreams. Before all this striving, all these ventures and clashes, I used to take the time to examine things, the varied feathers of birds, the damp exigencies of the frog. Who knows? In a hundred years someone may find a mossy log shaped a little like a knight, on which an escargatoire of snails pursues the silver quests of their kind, clothed in quiet brown armour of shell. PS Cottier
Any excuse to use the word ‘escargatoire’…
Tuesday poem: To Sleep by John Keats
September 24, 2013
O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
Rhyming soul and mole is a brave thing, isn’t it? And sorry for using that photo again so soon, but it seems appropriate to one caught up in the exhausting world of editing! Click this link, dropped from a kakapo feather doona, and see if other poets have been thinking about dozing:
PS Cottier 