Saturday Rave: the poems of Catherine Baker.

Twitter gets a bad rap.

It's true that some unwise and unkind people use Twitter to inflict their foolish and revolting views upon the public, but there's a lot of life-enhancing poetry to be found there, too.

I found this poem by Catherine Baker on Twitter. I've never met Catherine, but she's edited a few of my books so I feel I know her quite well.

Catherine's poetry on Twitter started as a daily Tweet in haiku form as an experiment to discover how long she could go on finding something cherishable to describe and share. 

The answer to that question has pretty much turned out to be forever.

Catherine's poems can be found @catbake, and I recommend them strongly for the refreshment of the spirit.

This poem is a little longer than a haiku, but it's typical of Catherine's poetry in that it looks with care and precision something usually unnoticed, and connects it with our own experience of the world.


living your whole life
between these two rushing roads
motorway fieldmouse
burrowing into silence
where no foot can follow you
the seeds are all yours
and the ancient scent of herbs
woken by the rain

****

A work of art shows us something. A good work of art shows us something we've never seen before.

And all for free on Twitter.

Thanks, Catherine.

Word To Use Today: scent. This word comes from the Old French sentir, to sense, from the Latin sentīre, to feel.