Neglected Children
poem by Matthew de Lacey Davidson
“Art is the child of Nature…”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, KERAMOS, st. 29
A question which I often pose –
in light of genres which we try dispose –
while I wander in the dale and the glen,
I wonder where are all the nature poems, then?
I’m trying not to be unkind,
but a poem isn’t something solely of the mind;
metaphysics can’t produce a tear — so when –
and how — and where are all the nature poems, then?
Excluded from the Judge’s fashion show –
to the shredder they will go –
and maybe women being told to write like men –
is that why there aren’t any nature poems, then?
A question which I dearly love to pose:
where, oh where are all the nature poems, then?
N.B. This poem was suggested by a (possibly) apocryphal story I heard about a well-known poet who was asked to judge a poetry competition. When confronted with the entries, he asked where all the nature poems were. The response from the organisers was that they had all been discarded. The poet’s response was that he would have preferred to have looked at those, instead.
