Today is National Poetry Day

And I feel I should post a piece of poetry in order to celebrate this. But which piece. Another spike or maybe something else. Yes definitely someone else.

Conservation Piece

The countryside must be preserved!
(Preferably miles away from me.)
Neat hectares of the stuff reserved
For those in need of flower or tree.

I'll make do with landscape painting
Film documentaries on TV.
And when I need to escape, panting,
Then open-mouthed I'll head for the sea.

Let others stroll and take their leisure,
In grasses wide up to their knees,
For I derive no earthly pleasure
From the green green rash that makes me sneeze.

Roger McGough
Collected Poems

A poem dedicated to my beautiful little dog Dobbie who appears to be allergic to grass - it makes her little belly sore and red and she keeps chewing her feet.

And the second is by a poet that I am just discovering. I used this poem for a piece of Uni work and it has always impacted me even though I am not sure I truly understand it. I used it to make a visual web site linked to a piece of fiction about a mother and daughter.

To One Shortly to Die

From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,
You are to die - let others tell you what they please, I
cannot prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you - there is no escape
for you.

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it,
I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,
I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,
I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbour,
I absolve you form all except yourself spiritual bodily, that
is eternal, you yourself will surely escape,
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.

The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,
Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping
friends, I am with you,
I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be
commiserated,
I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.

Walt Whitman
The Complete Poems

I want to know more about these poets works.
I want to feel more.