Poem of the Month - July 2010

My blogging has seriously slipped - I missed June completely, and here it is almost the end of July and I am still to get the keys into action. Partly, I guess, poetry has taken a bit of a back seat for me lately. taking a month's holiday was obviously both a rest from work and from creativity. Leafing through my little notebook today, though, I found the beginnings of a poem from the last day of the trip. It surprises me that being happy and relaxed is not the best time to write good poetry; it seems there must be an urgency about it for me - which I guess, when I think about it, is not so far from Keats' adage, 'Let poetry come easy, or let it not come at all.'

I am sure we all ask ourselves the question from time to time - when is a poem ready to put on public display? Should it be presented after scrutiny, review, refinement and editing, or should it be as close as possible to it's natural, sponaneous state? Which is the better version?

In an attempt to begin some discussion around this question, I am willing to put myself and my verse on the line. As raw as it is, this is my offering for July.

Listening to Abba via iPod
On the Frankfurt train
It is almost 9.30 and still light.
These are the last pretty villages
With pretty houses
And the necessary church steeples
Surrounded by lush green fields
I will see, this time.

Electric wires tarnish the landscape
And solar-panelled rooves
Remind me that this is
The twenty-first century.
The price we all pay for comfort.

The ICE train is moving at 200 kph
Trucks dawdle along the road
At around half that speed.
Fields of green, pale and dark, gold, and purple here and there
Form rich textured canvasses, neatly woven and decorated

With vegetable baubles and grape-cluster pendants.

Before the light disappears
Like an oasis in the desert,
My eyes desperately devour each pretty postcard
Rectangle of southern German countryside,
To keep me nourished for a while -
Who knows when I will return!

30 June, 2010