Delivering the Thursday Poem

The Thursday Poem3 September 2020PRIVATE RECITALThe songs and poems we grew up with are the markers of significant events in our lives and the mile posts by which we measure our times. In that sense they belong to us, the hearer. The singer and songwriter and poet have given us fuel for our journey and for that they deserve our fondest gratitude. Dr Jeff Obadiah Simmonds put the video together. Fondest gratitude to him too. Words below.Private recitalThe singer and the song mergeinto that still place that buffersthe waking from the dream,where I lie embraced by the watersof a meandering stream.The singer and the song speak to me in a private tongue that makes quiet love one on one.Nothing else is needed and nothing else is known except that place the song makes my own,where I breathe the sweet airdown that road the singer roams.The singer and the song speak to me in a private tongue,each step drenched by the rain and sun.Like the monk with his scripturesand prayers and promises to come, I’m cloistered from that clamour of choice by the choir of a single, soothing voice.The singer and the song speak to me in a private tonguethat whispers of the things begun.I paid the price to own them and the words and tune are mine; mineto plough the heart as deep as blood and reap a harvest long after the singer to time has succumbed.The singer and the song speak to me in a private tongue,I speak to them of what is yet to come.Mark Raffills

Posted by Mark Raffills on Thursday, September 3, 2020