Star On Which These Eyes Have Seldom Closed

Without some early encouragement, how many of us would have continued to write, to draw, to cut up books for collage, to sculpt, to experiment with cooking, with hair dye or make-up? Praise may have been scanty, but had there been none at all, who would have persisted?

At 18 I had more or less given up on writing. But moving away from my home town, to Indianapolis, I found that I missed one particular young lady friend. So I wrote Kara a longish letter. In her reply, she told me that she had loved the letter, had laughed out loud, and even had read parts of it to her father. Her praise revived for me the early desire to write poetry.

Lighted Coffins In The Dark

The Sleepers

 

AS I walked down the waterside

This silent morning, wet and dark;

Before the cocks in farmyards crowed,

Before the dogs began to bark;

Before the hour of five was struck

By old Westminster's mighty clock:

A Poor Life This

Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

Stand and Stare

Having ridden my thumb extensively when a younger man, I am proud to post a poem from a child of the road.

W.H. Davies was a wanderer. He was a tramp and a hitchhiker and a train jumper. He was a hobo of the old school, working on cattle boats to come to America, jumping a train and riding off to new places. And along the way he took the time to notice the wonder of all that was around him, both the people and the environment.

He was infatuated with the romance of his lifestyle, and wrote four or five autobiographies, each time catching up to the point in his travels at which he was writing. And along the way he wrote poems, twenty-some books full of them, including even the Tramps Opera in Three Acts.


Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.