It finally feels like summer, no matter how long it lasts!

Maybe it's the heat or holiday vibes, or a sunny weekend by the Great British Seaside that's inspired me to do less this month. Long, balmy days are making me sleepy and lazy in the best possible way. All I want to do right now is kick back and chill.

So, for the month of August, I’d like to quiet my own words and instead share the words of others - poems that I love and have collected and come back to again and again.

The late, great Dr Michael Mosley told us about the benefits of reading poetry out loud and how rhythmical speaking is thought to slow the breath and set off the relaxation response. Here he is explaining, his wonderful reassuring voice relaxing in itself: Just One Thing - Read a Poem

My first choice to kick off a month of poems is the apt Leisure by William Henry Davies.

I hope you sit, enjoy, let them wash over you, or even better, read them out loud 🙂

Leisure

William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Let’s practise.