Welcome back to the daily poem here in the Close Reads Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern. Today is December 12th, 2019. And the poem that I'm going to read today is by an American poet named Eleanor Wiley. She lived from 1885 to 1928.

Before I do that, though, I want to remind our younger listeners about our contest for this month.

Remember, I read Ogden Nash's poem about Custer the Dragon a few weeks ago.

And if you go back to that poem and listen to it, the contest is that you draw an illustration

or a painting or some way artistically represents that story.

Post it online with the hashtag T-D-P-Ballad, B-A-L-L-A-D.

That's the hashtag to post on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or wherever you want to post it.

And then the deadline for that is December 31st, and we'll choose winners from a couple different age groups. And those winners will give books and various great

prizes for their work. So again, that's the hashtag TDP ballot. The deadline is December 31st.

All right. The poem that I'm going to read today, as I said, is by Eleanor Wiley, and it is called Silver Filigree.

It goes like this.

The icicles reeling on trees and festoons swing swayed to our breathing.

They're made of the moon.

She's a pale waxen taper,

and these seem to drip transparent as paper

from the flame of her tip.

Molten, smoking a little into crystals they pass,

falling, freezing, to brittle and delicate glass.

Each a sharp pointed flower, each of brief stalactite,

which hangs for an hour in the blue cave of night.

I once read that Eleanor Wiley was enamored with the poetry of the British Romantics, particularly of Shelley, to such a point that it was unhealthy.

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