The thing about poems is that you never quite know when they’re going to pop up. They can, of course, be wholly relied upon NOT to appear when you sit down to write one.
For me, they come when I’m nodding off, when I am attempting to relax in the bath, and very often, when I am walking.
As a child I was forever in the fields, playing in the garden, or simply contemplating life, sitting on the gate to the nearby field. For a while there was a friendly horse called Pippit who would come when I called, and there were always dens to be built, berries to be picked, and trees to be imagined into houses and castles.
Nowadays, I try to walk most mornings before I sit down at the laptop. There are a few dog walkers on the route I take, but otherwise it’s just me and nature. By the time I get to the gate where I stop to take a photo of the sunrise showing off behind a tree, I’ve often got a poem forming.
So that got me thinking about the circular nature of it all. Here’s me, on my own, at a gate to a field, full of ideas and hope, just like I used to be.
I’ve pledged to myself to write more poems while out and about in nature, this year. I feel lucky to live where I do, lucky to be writing poems which are being published and enjoyed, and very lucky to have found another gate (all about symbols, this writing game, after all).
Notes on a Walk
Here
there are no pavements
but your feet know
just where
to go.
Here
stone walls are hung
with rugs
like moss-green
Granny-sofas.
Here
Hellos are gifts you find
on walks
passed between strangers
with smiles.
Here
there is so much
sky.