Poetry Walk

Last month's poetry walk was quite an English experience. First there was slight rain, then mild sunlight, followed by sleet, a biting cold wind, then a gentle damp breeze gave way to sunlight breaking through the racing cloud. Who said life is boring?
Below are copies of two poems written by Richard who shared the walk. He also recited two other poems: 'The Weathers' by Hardy, which was very apt as we heard the first cuckoo of the year, and  'Spring and Fall' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.   Thanks to Richard for allowing me to publish them here.
The walk and the talk was an experience which I will never forget.
Hopefully another walk will be arranged in midsummer.

On reading poetry in print

                                                I cannot hear the poets, all I have

                                                Is print on paper, and I give my own

                                                Sound to hear the poets’ words, and make

                                                What seems to me they want to say, live on.

                                                I do not see their molten silver flow

                                                Toward the mould of press or pen; that thought,

                                                That spirit freezes to the words I read.

                                                Then, heated to the melt, I feel my own

                                                Liquid silver glisten and go.

                                                                                                                                         Richard Harris

Metaphors of a mountain day

Lifting away the first quiet dew of dawn

the monarch of the morning takes the sky,

warming the golden cliffs and earth and grass,

and as his powers rise, burning the rock,

parching from earth the last dark patch to pale

dry dust, commanding all the leaves on trees

to give up every drop stored in their veins.

The daughters of this moisture, prim, demure

white damsels sail before the king, grow fat

and blousy, till their kin take umbrage, and

with darkened brows, gather to menace him,

join shoulders to become a threatening mass

and swarm across the landscape for revenge.

As dim rain-curtains sweep across far hills

the first-to-fire, leopard-lightning, claws

to rend the sky; black hordes like charging beasts

thunder their hooves in answer.  Whispered breeze

foretells the rain:  first statements from great drops,

an urgent wide accord, till the whole scene

 a torrent of wet splashy words, that prompts

a childish babble of meadow rivulets. 

                                                    

 Now,

as sudden as it starts, the rain is gone,

and while the grey-stacked sky parts for the king

to show red sunset smiles, the earth lies still;

the sound of silence listening to itself,

reflecting on the drama of the day.

                                                                           Richard Harris