seasons – Page 22 – don't confuse the narrator

yet more weather

reindeer plush and daffodils — Looks like rain, dear

No one who lives in the UK needs to be told that the weather continues unabated, and I can’t be the only one who’s thinking that surely now February is here we might expect some proper winter weather rather than all this wind and rain.

The phrase February fill dike came to mind. Googling it I found this article from the Guardian two years ago, which reports that “southern, central and eastern regions […] are teetering on the brink of drought”. It also says, somewhat surprisingly, that February tends to be one of the driest months of the year.

Not wanting to get political, I’ll just mention that I was told as a child that “bad governments bring bad weather.”

Well, whether drought or flood, we seem to have been having bad weather for years. The poem below was written in January 2001:
Continue reading “yet more weather”

work in progress

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”

what are you waiting for?

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.

Why, then, is the linden determined to hang on to her seeds? They have to go some time, so what is she waiting for?

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.)

autumn wings

Speeding bus
startles
a flock of leaves
into flight

armies of the dead

Some years ago I was in the south of France at this time of year. Everywhere we went there were fields of dead sunflowers lined up like troops deployed to watch the roads.

Instead of the open faces and bright golden helms and plumes of summer knights, these figures had heavy dark heads set precariously on bony stalks that were slowly bleaching to ivory as the year began to fade.

Travelling by car, we sped past far too fast for me to do more than note the overall effect.

Today, though, the stark silhouettes looking over my garden fence have reminded me of these skeletal armies. I can only imagine what it must be like to walk past field after field of them, particularly when the wind is high and their mis-shapen yellowing limbs twitch and shiver and they whisper to each other in a secret language.