Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern and today's Thursday, December 2nd, 2021.

Today's poems by Edward Thomas, born Philip Edward Thomas, who's a British poet who lived from 1878 to 1917.

He was one of the World War I poets and sadly died in France during the war. He was killed in action at the Battle of Arras in 1917.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called Bird's Nests, and it's a good winter poem for you.

It goes like this.

The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind, some torn, others dislodgeged all dark, everyone sees them.

Low or high in tree or hedge or single bush, they hang like a mark.

Since there's no need of eyes to see them with, I cannot help a little shame that I missed most,

even at eyes level, till the leaves blew off and made the seeing no game.

Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests still in their places, now first known at home and by far roads.

Boys knew them not, whatever jays and squirrels may have done. And most I like the winter nests,

deep head, that leaves and berries fell into. Once a dormouse dined there on hazelnuts,

and grass and goose grass seeds found soil and grew.

As with most of the more hopeful winter poems about nature, this poem ends with a note about regeneration, with a note about how for things to grow, things have to die. But what makes

this poem really stand out is the particularity of it.

All of us, no matter how deep into poetry we are, how much we know it, how well we know it,

how we can identify forms, all those sorts of things, you can be a poetry novice and still

grasp onto the scene, the image that he creates.

The mark, he says, because those nests

hang like a mark. We've all been there. I mean, I'm sitting here right now looking out into our

yard where there's many trees and most of the leaves are gone here in North Carolina. And I see nests

that I've never noticed before. And when I read this, I was looking for a poem to do today.

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