Waking the Baby

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long”. —Sylvia Plath

Best set them down on unsullied paper

Make this the friend you can pour

Your delinquent rough words

Stumbling meaninglessly

Except they are for you

Tumbling over

And over

Themselves

Over the threshold

Let them flow like giddy teenagers

Then

Hide them

For a while

Whilst they recover

When ready take them out

Take them out into the light

Talk to them through and through

Till they behave then decide what to do.

 

The Sylvia Plath quote came up on Twitter from Ariel Poets to which I replied and this became the seed germ for the poem.

©JohnDaniels

https://arts-emergency.org/charity/

Dunnock

Dull grey you may be

Unsung unnoticed unbidden

Notes that float a sweetness hidden

Neath the hedge

Overtures are yours

Caught up by the breeze

Keeping me company

 

©JohnDaniels

 

Raven

I heard

Raven tell of

the fall to earth

long long ago

far from this sullied isle

unclipped

to bunt and roll

buoyed

on updraughts of myths

on wave riding cliffs

and hot moor risings

 

Now heed Raven

with tellings and tidings

and when every hope is gone

let  Raven call you home

 

©JohnDaniels

Haiku

Scattered by cold winds

Rejected leaves fan out over the sward

Tears well in our eyes.

 

Mumerating starlings

Seeking their roost dance unaware

In awe we watch

 

Ice grips forcing us
deep into the warmth of dreams
lost in images of spring

 

In the scrubbed air

High peaks are just as far as

Misty mornings.