The place that I love most is anywhere that I can be with my precious child or grandchild.....

I'd rather be a mother than anyone on earth
Bringing up a child or two of unpretentious birth...
I'd rather tuck a little child all safe and sound in bed
than twine a chain of diamonds about my [carefree] head.
I'd rather wash a smudgy face with round, bright, baby eyes
Than paint the pageantry of fame or walk among the wise.
--- Meredith Gray

yoyoban - there is no need to try to find a more apt poem. Thank you for this. I have just passed it on to my husband. V

Jan, I think your poem is absolutely wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing it with us. I've been writing poetry much of my life, but am a bit shy about posting any of it on forums.

This is why I love Maine, U.S.A.

Seascape

This is the captured product
of no artist's fevered hand,
of no ground pigment,
or brush-stroked hope.
Paint-hazed chips of ocean,
blunted by a fog-gift day,
rise and fall against an
imagined beyond;
impressionist fulfillment
is in the feathery pines
made abstract by a loving eye.
Is there a soul
whose anxious fear is not
washed away by pulsing tide
and beaded fog-damp hair,
And then brought back -
heightened - by
the keening human gulls?
Time-ground sand is wet,
and the massive rocks are waiting.

- Gus Bombard

95. LELANT

(In Memory of Thomasine Trenoweth, aged 23)

THE little meadow by the sand,
Where Tamsin lies, is ringed about
With acres of the scented thyme.
The salt wind blows in all that land ;
The great clouds pace across the skies ;
Rare wanderers from the ferry climb.
One might sleep well enough, no doubt.
Where Tamsin lies.

Tamsin has sunshine now and wind.
And all in life she might not have.
The silence and the utter peace
That tempest-winnowed spirits find
On slopes that front the western wave.
The white gulls circle without cease
O'er Tamsin's grave.

E. K. Chambers.

This poem has haunted me for years trying to find out who was Tamsin and why she died so young and it reminds me of by birthland Cornwall.
Thank you all for sharing and I only included my poem because of the deep deep love I have for Pembrokeshire.
Not because I think it is anything at all but heartfelt.
I dont think you should be shy about sharing WN.

In Kentucky (1902)

The moonlight falls the softest
In Kentucky;
The summer's days come oft'est
In Kentucky;
Friendship is the strongest,
Love's fires glow the longest;
Yet, a wrong is always wrongest
In Kentucky.

The sunshine's ever brightest
In Kentucky;
The breezes whisper lightest
In Kentucky;
Plain girls are the fewest,
Maidens' eyes the bluest,
Their little hearts are truest
In Kentucky.

Life's burdens bear the lightest
In Kentucky;
The home fires burn the brightest
In Kentucky;
While players are the keenest,
Cards come out the meanest,
The pocket empties cleanest
In Kentucky.

Orators are the grandest
In Kentucky;
Officials are the blandest
In Kentucky;
Boys are all the fliest,
Danger ever nighest,
Taxes are the highest
In Kentucky.

The bluegrass waves the bluest
In Kentucky;
Yet bluebloods are the fewest
In Kentucky;
Moonshine is the clearest,
By no means the dearest,
And yet, it acts the queerest,
In Kentucky.

The dove's notes are the saddest
In Kentucky;
The streams dance on the gladdest
In Kentucky;
Hip pockets are the thickest,
Pistol hands the slickest,
The cylinder turns quickest
In Kentucky.

Song birds are the sweetest
In Kentucky;
The thoroughbreds the fleetest
In Kentucky;
Mountains tower proudest,
Thunder peals the loudest,
The landscape is the grandest - and
Politics - the damnedest
In Kentucky.
Judge James Hillary Mulligan (Poem first read at a political meeting where it was received with great delight)

They Sit Together on the Porch by Wendell Berry (State Poet Laureate

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes--only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons--small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

God gives all men all earth to love,
But since men's hearts are small,
Ordains for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground- in a fair ground
Yea, Sussex by the sea.

Rudyard Kipling

This is the last verse of a long poem. Part of which was adapted as my school's song and still can bring a lump to my throat even though nearly sixty years have passed since I last sang it.

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Dorothea Mackellar 1885-1968

Such wonderfully evocative poems - how I should love to visit YOUR special places - Kentucky, Maine, Australia,Sussex, The Forest of Dean and of course the loveliness of being with those most precious to us.
I've been thinking about our regional poets and those that stay with me are by Betjeman and Houseman because I know their 'places' so well - there must be so many that never reach us via the published page - Here's to Poets!

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

from The Waste Land, by T S Eliot.

I work not far from here. I love the City - the buzz, the buildings, the history. But yes, on a foggy miserable day in winter, it feels a bit like this.

Perhaps this is better.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge.

Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth

I'd like to join in, but I can't think of *anything* written about Bedford (or its environs) and I'm not sure I quite love where I live right now. I mean, it's perfectly nice, but Love? Hmm.

Will continue to mull, but am enjoying all of your contributions so far...

Lemon: What about a writing about somewhere that is your "happy place"? I don't think this thread is confined only to where we live. The places I have happy memories of are the motorways in the UK. Riding along with my husband, dog, music on the radio and a packed lunch, with a new destination to see at the end of the trip. Lovely! I don't know if there is a poem to fit this, though. :-)

Liz, if I could write a poem about West Texas, I would. Unfortunately, I don't have a brain disposed to writing poetry, so I only dream about what I would include in a poetic tribute to a place that I didn't know how much I loved until I was long gone from it:

Daylight is perhaps not the best time to view the plains as they can seem bleached, flat and featureless.
But when evening rolls around, the wind softens and the not unpleasant odor, to me, of earthiness (a kinder word than dustiness) will indicate that something is probably happening to the west. Sure enough, reds, oranges and vivid pinks are layering the horizon and there are purples, greens and lemony yellows swirling halfway across the sky until they meet the deeper indigo of night. This lasts for a surprisingly long time, all brought to the viewer courtesy of that pest: dust.

West Texas nights with distant thunderheads have to be among the most enchanting things I have ever experienced. The flashes of lightning, momentarily illuminating the billowing cloud banks, have spectacular zags whose patterns linger behind eyelids for minutes. These storms can be forty miles away but there's nothing to impede their light shows. No sounds will be heard, usually, but if the cloud is coming toward you a faint rumbling will progress to booms and crashes -- the gods are playing tenpins, as the saying goes.

The stars are especially twinkly over the plains and desert because they compete with the fairy lights seen in a fifty mile radius from any point on the ground, in the country outside the cities and towns. Driving the highways is the perfect transport for seeing this, especially if you pull off the road and sit on the hood for a while -- which I did many a time, all by my lonesome, and was never afraid because another car seldom passed and since another vehicle can be seen for such long distances, I had plenty of time before its arrival to get back in my car to drive again. It is not unusual to be able to see the street-light patterns of six or seven small towns around you. When you hit the edge of the Caprock, the distance you can see into the drop-off is even greater, I'm told.

I've lived in and visited some of the greenest, lushest, and most beautiful places on earth, yet there's something about West Texas... I once met a woman from the South Island of New Zealand in, of all places, Mentone, Loving County, Texas. I asked her what she was doing there, thinking that surely she was just passing through, as I was. But she told me she had been in Mentone for nearly ten years. (Mentone is the seat of the least populated county in the USA.) I thought, good grief, why? After living in one of the loveliest places in creation, what did she see in Loving County? She set me straight: "It is another kind of beauty." -- Ahh! So it is.

Annpan, I don't know how long ago you last made a journey on a UK motorway, but these days there is absolutely nothing poetic about them. A car-ride into the Maws of Hell surrounded by repair works, vehicle break-downs, bad/rude drivers, no warnings of four to five hour delays ahead; just far too much traffic crowded onto a totally inadequate road-system.

Frieda, I can appreciate the 'different' type of beauty to be found in an area such as West Texas. I would be more bothered about the inadvisability (if that's the right word) of not being able to spend time outside your car as a lone female. Does Texas have more than its fair share of crackpots?

Liz, the poor mad poet John Clare is more-or-less from Beds (over the border in Northants) and John Bunyan did write poetry plus the words to that very rousing hymn we used to sing at school assembly To Be Pilgrim

Here is a link that might be useful: hobgoblins and foul fiends

Friedag
You write so well a beautiful piece of poetic passage your writing is so fresh and inviting and so personal - why should you write poetry when you can write like this. There could be no better tribute I'm sure. I want to go!
I should love to read more of your writing.

Vee, I took to the motorways around 2000. I suppose I was enjoying the company of my husband ( I had not had a lot of that when he was younger. He was either working odd shifts or doing things for the community.) We were on a working holiday and if there were the occasional delays, well we were not in a great hurry and would eat a picnic by the side of the road along with the other motorists, as happened on one occasion. At night we would pull over to let great lorries go past and the drivers would blink their lights in thanks.
How about something more poetic? On a trip in Australia, we pulled up at a headland, got out a blanket and lay on our backs watching the night sky. No lights meant that the stars are thick and almost within touch. The surf of the Indian Ocean is a muffled sound far below. The Earth seems to have a heart beat. (Then an insect bites you and spoils the moment!)
Sorry, I cannot stay serious for long. I receive many complaints about this. :-)

I think that you don't' have to be on a UK motorway to experience rude, bad behavior of drivers! Choose any smaller highway in my town and you are likely to get a full dose of boorish actions.
Sadly, it's a sign of our times.

Perhaps that's why I'd rather live off in my woods, watching the wild turkey amble along followed by a dozen or more offspring mindlessly tracking Mama. Or see deer nibbling my prize flowers and veggies...though I prefer that they wouldn't, I realize that we are sharing this wooded space and therefore I must allow for their misbehaviors! I think nothing amuses me as much as my crows and their bizarre behaviors. I once watched a crow, in the deep snow of winter, diving into the fluffy new snowfall, playing and taking a "snow bath". Chipmunks and squirrels run rampant, stowing away food in locations they will never recall and chasing each other in circles. We also have fox, raccoon, opossum and black bear which all pay visits from time to time.
Toss in a bright-eyed grandchild eager to share a hiking adventure into the woods and it is heaven.

I have nothing to contribute except my appreciation for all these pieces. They are wonderful.

Jankin, thank you for your kind words! I love reading poetry (although not necessarily interpreting what it means), but I cannot, for the life of me, produce it. My attempts are only exercises in frustration, and the only explanation I can come up with is that I just don't have any talent for it. The only poem I ever wrote that was halfway decent was about a cat. Oh well, I have to find another avenue to express myself.

Vee, my experience in West Texas is nearly four decades removed, so I don't know how the situation is now, or has been more recently -- what with illegal 'immigration' and a general increase in crackpots the world over. But, at that time, I probably felt the safest in West Texas that I ever felt in any other place I've ever been. That's why I didn't think twice about ranging around the countryside alone in my car, or stopping and getting out of my car:

One time I took a nap on a roadside picnic table and didn't hear a single car pass, but evidently there was at least one. I woke up to a man calling to me, "Ma'am, are you okay?" I said I was, so he went on to explain that he was a rancher, living down and off the road a piece, and had passed earlier and saw me, but he kept going. On his return trip, he saw I was still there, so he thought he should check to see if I was all right. I thanked him for his concern and he, with a wave good-bye, drove off.

Thinking about this incident and several others, I wonder if I was tempting fate (some I cringe over now if I had done them in any other place or time). Of course there's no way of knowing if I was foolish, but lucky; so all I can say is that West Texans might seem eccentric to people who are more accustomed to trees and lots of the color green, but actual crackpots were (are) far and few between there.

The following poem reminds me of my late mother's girlhood, raised on a North Carolina farm as the youngest of 11 children. She told me many stories when I was a child about how hard they all worked. I love going back to visit the old pre-Civil War wooden house with porch. It still stands in its fields:

In an Iridescent Time

My mother, when young, scrubbed laundry in a tub,
she and her sisters on an old brick walk
Under the apple trees, sweet rub-a-dub.
The bees came round their heads, and wrens made talk.
Four young ladies each with a rainbow board
Honed their knuckles, wrung their wrists to red,
Tossed back their braids and wiped their aprons wet.
The Jersey calf beyond the back fence roared;
And all the soft day, swarms about their pet
Buzzed at his big brown eyes and bullish head.
Four times they rinsed, they said. Some things they starched
then shook them from the baskets two by two,
And pinned the fluttering intimacies of life
Between the lilac bushes and the yew:
Brown gingham, pink, and skirts of Alice blue.

by Ruth Stone.

Here's another offering -- this one in prose. I loved the four years I lived in the Virginia mountains. The following is from one of my favorite works: "A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard.

" I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia's Blue Ridge. An anchorite's hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church like a barnacle to a rock. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold.....The woods were flush with flowers. The redbud trees were in flower, and the sassafras, dully; so also were the tulip trees, catawbas, and the weird pawpaw. On the floor of the little woods, hepatica and dogtooth violet had come and gone; now I saw the pink spring beauty here and there, and Solomon;s seal with its pendant flowers, bloodroot, violets, trillium, and May apple in luxuriant stands. The mountains would be brilliant in mountain laurel, rhododendron, and flame azaleas,and the Appalachian Trail was probably packed with picnickers. I had seen in the steers' pasture daisies, henbits, and yellow-flowering oxalis...."

I miss the stunning array of wildflowers I used to see in the Virginia woods, as well.

Frieda -

You are absolutely correct in that West Texas has a beauty all of its own... I think when I wrote that entry, I was thinking of autumn in England when I was growing up and comparing it to here...

But i completely agree with you: there is something to be said for the West Texas sky, and I certainly miss it when I visit a place like NYC - very claustrophic... And the people here, on the whole, are extremely kind.

Although there is the problem with people understanding the accent: yesterday, some guy on the phone could not understand my name, and somehow extrapolated from "Liz" that I was called "La Viva" and "I wasn't from around here"... The conversation was going to be so complicated to sort out that I just agreed with him that my name was La Viva and let it go...

I do end up with a lot of good stories from living here..!

My favorite places are northern California, New Zealand, and the gardens of several friends. I'll look around to see if I find appropriate poems; I don't have any in my mind at the moment.

However, I did want to comment on Jankin's posting about the girl Tamsin, and her unsuccessful search to find out who she was. Perhaps we will never know, but we do know that she was dearly loved. I was moved by the tribute.

Rosefolly

Since last week was the official beginning of autumn/fall, I remembered that one of my favorite poems was that by Keats: Ode to Autumn. It so reminds me of walking to school in Bedford, kicking leaves up with our feet and looking forward to playing field hockey at the games field.... I won't put it (the poem) here as it is so easy to find and so well known, but that is what I am thinking of today with regard to poems and places..

October
by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost
For the grapes' sake along the wall.