the fire-star of dawn

Thought I'd try and keep the 'Poets Laureate theme' going for today ...

... so here is Simon Armitage's "Dew"; as taken from the pictured 2014 selected poems. You can read a bit more about the setting for the poem via this link.

Am still the proud owner of the current Laureate's very first published volume - which I bought back in 1989 when it first came out.


Dew

The tense stand-off
of summer’s end,
the touchy fuse-wire
of parched grass,
tapers of bulrush and reed,
any tree
a primed mortar of tinder,
one spark enough to trigger
a march on the moor
by ranks of flame.

Dew enters the field
under cover of night,
tending the weary and sapped,
lifting its thimble of drink
to the lips of a leaf,
to the stoats tongue,
trimming a length
of barbed-wire fence
with liquid gems, here
where bog-cotton
flags its surrender
or carries its torch
for the rain.

Then dawn, when sunrise
plants its fire-star
in each drop, ignites
each trembling eye.

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Simon Armitage (1963 - )

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