Days of Dorothy
         Found poem, Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals
by Andrea Potos

Moonshine like herrings in the water.

William went into the woods and altered his poems.

I boiled Coleridge a mutton shop which he ate in bed.

The quietness and still seclusion of the valley affected me even
to producing the deepest melancholy. I forced myself from it.

Baked bread and giblet pie, a bad giblet pie.

William highly poetical.

All the morning I was busy copying poems.

I was so unlucky as to propose to rewrite “The Pedlar.”

The roses in the garden fretted and battered and quite spoiled;
the honeysuckle in its glory is sadly teased.

A very rainy day. I made a shoe.

The leaves drop with the heat of the sun all day long.

Glowworms in abundance.

We walked to the Easedale hills to hunt waterfalls.

The thrush sang all day as he always sings.

William kindled and began the poem.

In woods beyond Gowbarrow Park … I never saw daffodils
so beautiful … some rested their heads upon the stones as
on a pillow for weariness.

My tooth broke today. They will soon be gone. Let that pass,
I shall still be beloved, I want no more.


(Published in Her Joy Becomes, Fernwood Press)  

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