Poems / poetry / verse

I like your sis's poem dude. Bit rough round the edges, but a good publisher should sort that out.

This is one of my favourite poems. Thomas died in World War I sadly. I'm sure he would have gone on to much greater work. Puts the generation y thing in perspective I suppose.

I've been to Adlestrop, and if you sit in the bus shelter, which has the sign from the (long closed by Beaching) station on the wall, and close your eyes, all you can hear is birds...
*
Adlestrop
by Edward Thomas
*
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

I came across an old newspaper article about fireweed (willow herb) and this poem was mentioned. I am probably not the only cyclist to find himself at a deserted railway station with bike. Maybe things haven't changed that much since 1915. No rush to get back into the world, surrounded by willow herb, spotting red kites on thermal lifts, noisy insects in track verges, small mammals foraging about the platform.

Apparently willow herb (epilobium augustifolium) makes a great tea substitute.