Song of the Naiad by Ide Crawford

 


 

Thirteen-year-old Ide Crawford has won the Betjeman Poetry Prize 2018 and the Alan Garner Writing Competition 2016, and has been shortlisted for the Young Walter Scott Prize. She is Poet Laureate of St. Pancras Station. She is currently working with the Blacken Trust  to set up an open project exploring the way creative writing can be rooted in locale. She writes prose as well as poetry and has recently completed a children’s time-slip novel exploring the secret history of two mysterious places. Ide’s favourite things are sunsets, twisted tree trunks, thunderstorms, snowdrifts, and dusty books. She tweets about nature and folklore at  @mytangledgarden.

 


 

 

             

             

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

We sing our song of rise-rush-ring and spiral-sweep-spill

Of dip-down-ripple and fast flow-fill

Of wept water and whispering weed

Of sound-smooth rocks and silver speed

Of moss-fold and light-fold and shade-fold

Of tingling toes and cutting crisp call cold

Of bright bends and bubbles and broken-blue

Of sweet-sun-shafts that go tumbling through 

Of stream-curve-carved seats

Of cold-quickened heartbeats

Of races where water is winning

Of sky-snatches spinning

Of on-rush, down-pull

Fast and full

Down-pull

Rise-rush-ring, spiral-sweep-spill, dip-down-ripple, fast flow-fill

Tingling toes, broken-blue, sweet-sun-shafts, spiral-sweep-spill

Weed, wept-water, crisp-call cold, silver speed, fast flow-fill

Fill, flow, fast flow-fill, ripple-down, sweep-spiral, dip – spill

 

We sing our song of all this, and more,

From the stream will this music pour

From the stream this music thrill

The music of water-spill and heart-fill

Water-spill, heart-fill

 

 

Ide Crawford

 

 

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