Whose Footprints...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

This poem was read on BBC Radio 4’s Something Understood programme in November 2005. It first appeared on the blog in 2008 and has been requested today by ‘Declan’ for his wife Caitlin as it is her birthday.

Happy Birthday Caitlin!

Apparently, the family live in Somerset so might also enjoy my Somerset poems for Watchet, Dunster and Porlock, three historic villages on the coast that I have included in my latest collection On The Battlefields Of Love (2010); you can also find them by clicking on the BBC Somerset link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8144000/8144465.stm


WHOSE FOOTPRINTS...?

Footprints in the grass
might belong to anyone
enjoying a stroll
in quiet woods whether
mulling over problems,
making decisions
or wishing away pain
in the rain

Footprints in the grass
pass a huge oak and pause,
listen out...
for Nature’s cheerful voice.
Only, no birds singing,
or a grasshopper,
just more rain clawing
at the skin

Footprints in the grass,
like old friends fallen out,
desperate to put
things right...
suddenly, veering off
the beaten track,
a spring in each step, no
turning back

Baggy clouds starting
to break up; sun shining
through; birds singing
and, yes, grasshoppers too;
a gentler rain, flowers
opening their hearts
like hopeful footprints
in the grass

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2010

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from the original as it appeared in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]