C Richard Miles Poems

Sometimes the words I write seem not my choice
But feel to fall, full-fashioned, from my pen.
What I should say, if I could have my voice,
Is dull as dross, not eloquent like them,
...

We're only just a breath behind the man ahead;
we could reach out and touch him if we wanted
but it's the intimacy that we English dread,
a sense of loss of self with which we're haunted.
...

If you must slight me, let it be the touch
That snow in April, falling soft and white
Gives to the blossoms delicate and light,
So I don’t suffer, it won’t harm me much.
...

The cherry blossom’s out to brighten city streets
And daffodils all shout that spring is here to greet
The trees, about to burst in bud and leaf and bloom,
That bring us all relief from winter’s hateful gloom.
...

Have courage, for you face a fight
And it is time for you to go
Before the fading of the light.
Though it may rarely read quite right,
...

The city fox envies his soft, rural kin:
They don’t have to watch out for lorries and cars.
The sleek village vixen just lazes away
In wide-open fields, underneath sparkling stars.
...

And I looked out that day
And saw a barren land,
Though it had trees enough
And flower-filled fields enough
...

She peers inside her jewel-box once more
But sees beyond the riches that it holds:
The dazzling diamond brooches may dismay
And sparkling sapphire clusters fail to satisfy.
...

It’s the beat of the street that we need in this nation
If you want to tell the kids; go get an education
You’ll have to show ’em it’s a sort of salvation
From the me-now lifestyle that just craves titillation
...

This, Yorkshire’s hidden secret, in deepest Wensleydale,
Can hold no mystic message, nor tell no ancient tale
Unlike dour Semerwater, whose murky waters drown,
As goes the old tradition, that long-since vanished town
...