Today is National Poetry Day in the UK. Head over to Twitter for poems, links, and news; watch Guardian readers deliver their favorite poems; and be sure to check out and bookmark this list of 12 British Poets sharing their favorite poems and their thoughts on this year’s theme: light.
To celebrate, a found poem from Hattie’s diaries (scroll down to see original diary entry).
August 16, 1934: Sharp Lightning and Lovely Rain
Got up before sunrise, cool night
southwest breeze, sharp lightning
and lovely rain. Men to hay field
applied for feed-loan, no beef issued.
Tom took former-issue cow
in the rain. Maggie got meals
made cookies, finished ironing
mopped the floors. I wrote
in diary, made butter
three and one-half hours to churn
sewed buttons that came off in wash
and wiped dishes in evening.
Photo credit: M Gleason, Lightning storm 2nd shot August 30, 2013(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Let not the descending sun
find at your hand no worthy labor done.
Beautiful, Sally!