Tuesday Poem: Words by Edward Thomas

Out of us all
That make rhymes,
Will you choose
Sometimes –
As the winds use
A crack in a wall
Or a drain,
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through –
Choose me,
You English words?

I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnet rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer:

Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet
Equally,
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew –
As our hills are, old –
Worn new
Again and again:
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.

Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales,
Whose nightingales
Have no wings –
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire,
And the villages there –
From the names, and the things
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb,
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.

From 101 Poems for Children, chosen by Carol Ann Duffy and illustrated by Emily Gravett published by Picador. 


As light as dreams/ As tough as oak  - yes, I'd like to write words like that.  A very belated Tuesday Poem, but I've been involved in setting up web pages and links and all the publicity connected with a new project.  A few of us, who belong to the Poetry Society's 'North Cumbria Stanza Group', have just launched an anthology project 'Write to be Counted', intended to be an antidote to all the turmoil and gloom of the world at the moment.  And intended to be a defence of free speech and the right to write.    You can read all about it here    http://writetobecounted.blogspot.co.uk/

And if you're a poet, why not send us a couple of poems for consideration?  Poems to writetbcountedanthology@gmail.com