21st March 2015

I did a doodle today for World Poetry Day. I studied and read many poems as a teenager and in my early twenties, but sadly have been distant from them since. Or so I thought.

Poetry comes in so many varied and beautiful guises, obvious in their subtlety a lot of the time, or unobvious in their disguise at other times. I have listened and sung along to song lyrics on the radio; I have been captivated nightly with my daughters bedtime stories, rhyming or chanting to childhood prose; I have memories and emotions evoked through poetic licence of advertising, words from prose used to obtain reactions; and I look at my own work, the words I have written, and realise the poetic beauty within descriptions and character formations.

The poetry of my youth and informative years has stood the test of time and played a quiet role in so many aspects of my life. It crept in when I wasn't looking and has worked its magic.

Thank you poetry.

My favourite poem: I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD, By William Wordsworth

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:                                 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,                               

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.