Poems and Paths: THE SLOTHFUL SUN RELUCTANTLY RISES

Thursday, 20 December 2012

THE SLOTHFUL SUN RELUCTANTLY RISES

The Slothful Sun Reluctantly Rises

The slothful sun reluctantly rises

Behind the curtain of a distant copse,

Dragged disconsolately (unlike me)

From its warm horizon bed;

In no hurry, it would seem,

To face the frosty air.

And in the west, the waning moon,

Loath to leave her night-time silver sprinklings

To the unkindness of the dawn,

Outstays her welcome as, yet again,

She meets the cold mundanity of morning

And her glory fades before the brutal rays.

But, roaming once more across the homely sky,

Reanimated rooks rejoice.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: I think you may be the first poet to use the word mundanity. TSSRR captures well the mood of a person who occasionally hits the alarm clock snooze button for time three and makes deals with the gods of time four.

BM; 2 March 2013 at 06:01
Pete Thompson said...: Hahahah! I've always been an early riser and, in winter at least, I usually beat the dawn.; 2 March 2013 at 12:01

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About Poems and Paths

‘Poems and Paths’ is a record of my own impressions and perceptions, mostly from walking in the wolds and vales of the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Walking and writing have always strolled along together hand-in-hand, exploring, at one and the same time, the pathways on the ground and the pathways in the mind. It’s an intimate inter-relationship that can rejoice in broad, sunny vistas or creep in trepidation through the shadowlands where one might expect any map to warn: ‘Here Be Dragons’.

Paths are so much more than just connections that join together places. They also connect us directly to the landscape, to the past and the future, to those who have walked there before us and who will follow us and, most importantly, they connect us to our own imaginations and all the thoughts, emotions and half-remembered associations that lie not far below the surface of our consciousness.

The works of all the well- and lesser-known walker/writers bear testimony to this: George Borrow, Richard Jefferies, William Wordsworth, John Clare, Edward Thomas, W H Davies and, more recently, my much-missed friend, Roger Deakin, and the
nature writer, Robert Macfarlane.

As Macfarlane observes, “Paths are the habits of the landscape. They are acts of consensual making….They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people.”

Edward Thomas believed that paths record the impressions of all who pass along them:

“…heavy is the tread
Of the living: but the dead
Returning lightly dance:

Whatever the road bring
To me or take from me,
They keep me company
With their pattering”

‘Poems and Paths’ is written in the firm belief that, when traversing the pathways of the land and the pathways of the mind, it is always better to travel hopefully than to arrive.