Day of Rest

Blessed Sunday, day of rest,
a day on which to catch your breath
and put the busy world on pause,
while cracking on with all the chores.

The hoovering, the weekly shop.
The housework, laundry, washing up.
The futile war on disarray –
Sunday, such a restful day.

A chance to let yourself unwind,
to spend some precious family time
when on your phones or arguing
about the state the bathroom’s in;

to shake off last night’s beer and wine
by being made to run the line
at your youngest’s football game,
while getting yelled at in the rain.

Long may the reign of peace prevail
so you can answer work emails
and start the coming week less stressed –
blessed Sunday, day of rest.

(Brian Bilston)

Sunset on the Spire

All that I dream
By day or night
Lives in that stream
Of lovely light.

Here is the earth,
And there is the spire;
This is my hearth,
And that is my fire.

From the sun's dome
I am shouted proof
That this is my home,
And that is my roof.

Here is my food,
And here is my drink,
And I am wooed
From the moon's brink.

And the days go over,
And the nights end;
Here is my lover,
Here is my friend.

All that I
Can ever ask
Wears that sky
Like a thin gold mask.

(Elinor Wylie)

How do I love you?

How do I love you?
Oh, this way and that way.
Oh, happily. Perhaps
I may elaborate by

demonstration? Like
this, and
like this and

no more words now

A poem begins
with a lump in the throat;
a homesickness or
a love sickness.
It is a reaching-out toward expression;
an effort to find fulfillment.
A complete poem is one where an emotion
has found its thought
and the thought has found words.

(Robert Frost)

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)

(from best-poems.net)