Rhyme & (sometimes) Reason

Nighttime on Still Waters

What was the first poem that you ever learnt? This week marks the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death and, for some reason, it has brought to mind poems that she loved and that I shared with her as a child. There is something strangely powerful, evocative, perhaps even reassuring, about rhythm and rhymes. Sometimes, it might be, that the rhymes become the reason.

Journal entry:

“28th May, Friday

We’re together again,
Hands deep in soil.
Planting seedlings
Nurturing the earth,
Coaxing life.

A fine rain spangles the air.
This feels good.

And, when it comes down to it,
This is really all there is -
Tending the grounding
and helping it grow.”

Episode Information

In this episode I read a number of poems.

A.A. Milne:

· ‘Happiness’ (from When We Were Very Young. 1924 )

· ‘Come Out with Me’ (from Now We Are Six, 1927)

Kenneth Graham:

· Duck’s Ditty (from The Wind in the Willows, 1908)

Walter de la Mare

· Nod (from The Listeners and other Poems, 1912)

For a taste of cruising (at times) a very different type of waterway on East Anglian washes and levels, you might be interested in the recent episodes of Venessa’s vlog: The Mindful Narrowboat

General Details

In the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org.
Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence.

Piano interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.

All other audio recorded on site.

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