The Composing of a Poem

I am still writing letters from Bethy, but I have been rather slack lately! I'm writing one as soon as I have posted this so expect it soon! 

Here is a short piece of writing which I entered into The Inkpen Authoress' last writing contest.  

Enjoy and have a good day!

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The Composing of a Poem: A night-time glimpse of England

In moonlight after rain

Silent streets shine silver as

A black cat slips past

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  Imagine England: a dark night, and rain. The cobbled street has become a river and nothing is visible except golden dabs of blurred light from the few houses in which inhabitants are still awake. I wonder what could ever keep them from their beds on such a cold, sleety night when they could be anywhere else in their dreams; and I wish that I had only a dry place to rest awhile.

  But lines of a poem run through my head – chasing -- beginning following end, ‘Miles to go before I sleep--But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.’

  My steps follow after each other, streets follow silent streets; darkness wraps me in until I became one of the deep shadows.  And then I find myself in a walled lane, and the rain has stopped. There is still a tinkling of large drops from naked trees which lean over the street. Bare limbs hang over me and reach up to the sky all the way down to a curve in the lane. Things are becoming visible; a great luminous disk is appearing from behind the clouds, rushing her way through the breaking curtains.

  I pause and watch the scene; a fine mist fills the air dispersing the moonlight into a soft, transparent haze. From over the stone wall a blocked in house looks blankly up the street, there is a light in the lower windows, but they are dimmed by the brilliance of the moon now free of shredded cloud. 

   From somewhere far off a clock strikes the hour, the sound dimly penetrates through the quietening sounds of water.  A shape appears, slipping through an open gateway. A cat, black as the night has been, picks her way delicately across the silvered street. Reaching the other side she leaps up and for a moment pauses in silhouette against the silvered mist. I feel a glow of companionship for the fellow traveller with places of her own to get to on this chill night before the far-off dawn. She disappears, and I move on too.

   As I walk from London streets to country lanes on towards the beacon-like moon, her gentle face encouraging me onwards, the lines of a foreign poet’s words no longer dog my steps and I find other lines flow before me, and I long for my pen…

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Painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw