Don’t tell me to report anything suspicious that I may see.
Tell me instead how with rosy steps the morn advancing
drives the shades of night away
and standing barefoot on a Herdwick rug,
earthfast, I’ll call to the common mind
that it is needed, urgently, its common care.
And I’ll call out again to the fleeting senses
until they pause, and turn back
to claim their seats in the parliament of minds.
The message, about morning, the way it is sung,
as simple as can be, a homely sentence
and a country step towards a future worth having.
Like holding a young child on a wall to see the sea
for the first time, at dawn, the world’s thought-task,
vast, and simple, and irreversible.
This poem appears in Peter Riley’s Truth, Justice, and the Companionship of Owls, a new collection from Longbarrow Press. You can order the book securely by clicking on the relevant PayPal button below.
Truth, Justice, and the Companionship of Owls
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More than 60 previous Featured Poems can be accessed via this index (many of these pages also contain audio recordings and short films).
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