Although I understand that the UK weather was dreadful over the holidays, I’m not sure that it was really cold; certainly there are already signs of spring about. Of course we’re bound to get some real winter weather later, so I hope Nature has the good sense to be patient.
Chrysalis
Tight as apple pips,
buds spiral around
a moss-supple stalk
anticipating spring
when they will split
and shake free
tissue wings.
That’s a draft, and questions remain:
Continue reading “work in progress”
The neighbour’s oaks are always among the last of the local trees to lose their leaves, but the terrific winds of a few nights ago left them practically bare. Yesterday was the shortest day, so now it’s downhill to summer. 
And you? Are you planning to turn over a new leaf? Do you have a New Year’s resolution already prepared? Why aren’t you going ahead with it right now?
(And by “you”, I mean “me”, of course.)
For years I have been sure that there’s a poem in the woodshed. Today, I seem to have found another fragment:
Speeding bus
startles
a flock of leaves
into flight
The field is stippled with mole hills
and I am glad
I am not an ant
I could also be glad that I was in the sunny field and not in the distance beyond, where the sky is decidedly ominous. And that we’ve had a few mostly dry days and I wasn’t knee-deep in mud trying to get a decent picture. And that they were mole hills not cow pats…
There are, as has been pointed out by others, many reasons to be cheerful.
don't confuse the narrator 