A poem.

14 January 2018

I've never been someone who has really appreciated poetry. I remember liking some of the poetry we studied at school and enjoying some of the poems that my husband has shown me over the years we've been together but I've never felt the urge to pick up a poetry book and just lose myself in it, as I would with a novel.

But last weekend I was listening to Cerys Matthews' show on BBC 6 Music while I was getting ready to go out and she was talking to William Sieghart, who founded the Forward Poetry Prize. He said that people turn to poetry in times of need and often the challenge is finding the right poem for the right difficulty. This made perfect sense to me, that sometimes you discover things and they stay with you when you need them most. 

He then read out a poem which gripped me so completely that I forgot what I was doing for those few moments and just listened. 

It felt like the perfect poem to read at the beginning of a new year, with all its new adventures to come, because how dull would life be if you planned every moment and knew what was to come around every corner? I'm sharing it here because I thought you might like to read it too - who knows, perhaps this is the right poem for your difficulty too?

What If This Road by Sheenah Pugh


What if this road, that has held no surprises
these many years, decided not to go
home after all; what if it could turn
left or right with no more ado
than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin
were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
that is shaken and rolled out, and takes
a new shape from the contours beneath?
And if it chose to lay itself down
in a new way; around a blind corner,
across hills you must climb without knowing
what’s on the other side; who would not hanker
to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
a story’s end, or where a road will go?


2 comments

  1. This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

    Life has a funny way of working out and its only since last year that I have accepted that things will happen, when they happen and you can't possibly plan every detail.

    Actually, that mind set is incredibly *freeing* xx

    Lynsey || One More Slice

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    Replies
    1. You're so welcome - I'm really pleased you enjoyed it too. It is so very freeing and something that I need to remind myself of every so often xx

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