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Still trying to navigate on my small phone. Strange but i spent ages finding The Darkling Thrush. Read it at the turn of the century. Was walking the dogs this week and the poem suddenly came to mind. Could not remember the name or author. It was the first day of the year not the last. I live in the tropics not in bleak UK.Though the lush summer growth is dying back now. Was morning not evening and was feeling down . Looked up and saw a line of birds quarelling in the trees. Not even the thrushes. Fork tailed drongos. Suddenly I felt better and remembered snatches of this poem

That’s the lovely thing about poetry; when you read a line or two and the poet describes your feelings and thoughts, whether hurt or joy. It’s like someone reaching out through history and taking your hand.

O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
Andrew Lang

O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
Andrew Lang

Yes Penny. I was reading that if Hardy had realised the thrush singing was an aggressive territorial thing he probably wouldn't have used it. I disagree. He probably did know anyway. It wasn't that the song was sweet it was that the thrush bothered and kept going. Just like my drongos quarelling. It's what they do. Life goes on

A new favorite poem. Every time I think of it I smile.

High Dangerous
Catherine Pierce

is what my sons call the flowers—
purple, white, electric blue—

pom-pomming bushes all along
the beach town streets.

I can’t correct them into
hydrangeas, or I won’t.

Bees ricochet in and out
of the clustered petals,

and my sons panic and dash
and I tell them about good

insects, pollination, but the truth is
I want their fear-box full of bees.

This morning the radio
said tender age shelters.

This morning the glaciers
are retreating. How long now

until the space-print backpack
becomes district-policy clear?

We’re almost to the beach,
and High dangerous! my sons

yell again, their joy in having
spotted something beautiful,

and called it what it is.

Lovely!

My husband couldn’t ever remember the name ‘Magnolia’ and always called our gorgeous specimen, Gengis Khan.

Lovely!

My husband couldn’t ever remember the name ‘Magnolia’ and always called our gorgeous specimen, Gengis Khan.

There are 3 things that Pierce weaves together in this poem that give it its punch - lovely images of nature, the delightful innocence of childhood and 2 of the threats of our world. I am always stunned by poems that use beauty juxtaposed with one of the difficult, painful, tragic aspects of the human condition.

The author of a favorite poem of mine died today, W. S. Merwin. Here is the poem and then following is a link to the NYT obituary for Merwin.

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/obit ... mFWPrGJlT0