Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Wednesday, April 14th,

2021. Today's poem is by an English poet, who is also a novelist and screenwriter, and his name

is Lawrence Edward Allen Lee, but he went by Laurie. So Laurie Lee was the name you'd probably

be most familiar with if you've heard about him.

He lived from June of 1914 to May of 1997.

And the poem that I'm going to read today is called April Rise.

So, you know, a fitting poem for the middle of April.

It goes like this.

If ever I saw blessing in the air, I see it now in this still early day,

where lemon green the vaporous morning drips wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.

Blown bubble film of blue, the sky wraps round weeds of warm light whose every root and rods splutters with soapy green, and all the world sweats with the bead of summer in its bud.

If ever I heard blessing, it is there where birds and trees that shoals and shadows are, splash with their hidden wings,

and drops of sound break on my ears their crests of throbbing air.

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates,

the lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones.

While white as water by the lake,

a girl swims her green hand among the

gathered swans. Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick, dropping small flames to light the

candled grass. Now, as my low blood scales at second chance. If ever world were blessed, now it is.

So I ran across a quote from Lorry Lee, and I believe he was doing some kind of a reading,

because this is what he said prior to it, and I think you'd be interested in hearing what he had to say about it.

He said, quote, this was written in London, but indeed most of my poetry was written in London, although most of it is based on images and sensations, which I experienced in my home village or in the countryside around it.

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