Bedside table...

My bedside table is tremendously important to me. I read, knit, think, drink tea, listen to ebooks (while knitting!) and write when I am in or on my bed, so keeping all the necessaries nearby is important.

Lately I have been reading Ted Hughes letters and have gone through the full cycle of love/hate/love/like with that man! He was a great poet and writer and always congnisant of the fact that his letters would have a life beyond being personal communications. He has reignited my interest in Shakespeare, and I love this poem...

The Horses

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird--
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline--blackening dregs of the brightening grey--
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey--ten together--
Megalith still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments

Of a grey silent world..


..it goes on. Very evocative and lovely.