CURRENT MOON

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Sunday Poetry Blogging


Winter Sleep

When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone on steel,
When stone turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.

Little birds like bubbles of glass
Fly to other Americas,
Birds as bright as sparkles of wine
Fly in the nite to the Argentine,
Birds of azure and flame-birds go
To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:
They chase the sun, they follow the heat,
It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet!
It's not with them that I'd love to be,
But under the roots of the balsam tree.

Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr
Is lined within with the finest fur,
So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house
Of every squirrel and mole and mouse
Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather,
Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together
With balsam and juniper, dry and curled,
Sweeter than anything else in the world.

O what a warm and darksome nest
Where the wildest things are hidden to rest!
It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep,
Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!

~Elinor Wylie

Picture found here.

4 comments:

Karin said...

What a beautiful poem-and new to me.

xan said...

sigh. We've had it for such a short time, but central heating (well, I hate the heat too so let's say "automatic indoor temperature control") is what I'm gonna miss most when the Collapse comes.

should make it through this year anyway; scrounged up enough for half a tank of propane. It's probably best not to look too far ahead.

Teacats said...

http://www.somersetseasons.blogspot.com/

A simply wonderful blog -- Pagan, loves everything to do with home and hearth and garden and animals and books -- and she adores poetry too! Be sure to scroll down to read about the new book "To the Moon An Anthology of Lunar Poetry" edited by Carol Ann Duffy.

Cheers! Jan at Rosemary Cottage

Teacats said...

Sorry -- "An Anthology of Lunar Poems" -- sheesh! my typing!

Jan