National Poetry Day

National Poetry Day in the UK usually falls on the first Thursday in October. This poem was especially written for National Poetry Day 2016’s theme: ‘messages’.

'Messages'
Matt Goodfellow

look closely and you’ll find them
everywhere

in fields of patterned grasses
drafted by the hare

embroidered by the bluebells
through a wood

in scattered trails of blossom
stamped into the mud

scorched by heather-fire
across the moors

in looping snail-trails
scrawled on forest floors

scored across the sky
by screaming swifts

in rolling, twisting peaks
of drifting mountain mist

scribbled by an ocean
on the sand

look closely: you will see
and understand