Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I am Heidi White and I'm filling in for David Kern today.

I'm going to read to you a poem called 90th birthday by R.S. Thomas. You go up the long track that

will take a car but is best walked on slow foot, noting the lichen that writes history on the

page of the gray rock.

Trees are about you at first, but yield to the green bracken, the nightjar's house.

You can hear its spin on warm evenings. It is still now in the noonday heat, only the lesser voices sound.

Bluefly and gnats and the streams whisper.

As the road climbs, you will pause for breath and the far seas signal will flash,

till you turn again to the steep track, buttressed with cloud.

And there at the top, that old woman, born almost a century back in that stone farm,

awaits your coming, waits for the news of the lost village she thinks she knows, a place that

exists in her memory only. You bring her greeting and praise for having lasted so long with

time's knife shaving the bone.

Yet no bridge joins her own world with yours.

All you can do is lean kindly across the abyss to hear words that were once wise.

Well, I chose this poem because today is my birthday and I wanted a birthday poem.

David asked me to record the podcast for him today because it's my birthday and I love doing it.

So here I am.

And I read a lot of birthday poems and I picked this one because I had never read it before.

And it is fitting considering some of the contemplations I've had about birthdays lately.

But this poet, R.S. Thomas, he's a modern poet, a 20th century poet, was raised in Wales and is considered a voice

for the country in many ways. And as you could hear in my reading, he's meditating on the connection

...