Creative Juices

Accidental Mother posted a W H Auden poem today that had me remembering my love of poetry - this one:

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
~ W.H. Auden

You may remember it, if you've watched Four Weddings And A Funeral. It's a poem that makes me choke up every time, just a little.

Made me realize I haven't actually read any poetry in a very long time, never mind write some. I used to write prolifically in high school, when the trials of the teen years gave me much fodder for the pen. Then life panned out, got routine, got rutty, and I stopped writing.

A year or so back I shared some poetry with my son, fun stuff like Ogden Nash (a favourite of mine) and The Sad Tale Of A Motor Fan and The Highwayman (upon which the rhythm of my only published poem was based). Tried reading him the extra-long Albatross & Sea-man thingy, but didn't make it too far before he lost interest.

I was once given a book of Australian love-poems by some bloke that proposed, which has some interesting stuff in it. Never made it through the whole book though, as I just browsed here and there. (YES, Australians can write love-poems, silly! :) They're not all crass and tough, you know.)

Reading through some online poems today, I remembered the ease with which they flowed onto paper in the past. Wondering if I still have it in me now. Or did they disappear when the passion/s went out of my life?