John Lanyon lives in West Oxfordshire where he works as a gardener, linguist, musician and writer. He is approximately 25% of the poetry quartet The Four Wordsmen (www.fourwordsmen.com). John is excited by the secret lives of words, the play between the animate and inanimate world, the spirit of places. He thinks a poem has a kind of DNA and if you can find the first piece the rest will follow. It’s detective work. Tea helps.
Feeling Winter/Becoming Spring
Be a seed again
fold your limbs
draw yourself in
close your eyes
pull the world inside you
tighter and tighter
welcome the darkness
wait in the rest of winter
wait some more
let the wind carry you
the rain moisten you
the sun warm you
push slowly towards the sky.
John Lanyon
Lebanese Food Centre, Acton, November by John Lanyon