The sun slopes down into a summer evening
and hulking mountains strive to shed
the last rags of snow.
Sadly, the light has been all wrong the last few evenings to take a better picture, but the snow is still clearly visible in this one that I took one morning last week. There’ve been a lot fewer clouds for the last couple of days- it was positively hot outside at 9am today – and, although there are still a few shreds of white up on the peaks, I don’t think they’ll last many more days.
The world has not turned to black and white. This is a perfectly normal English day in mid May with 100% cloud cover, a bitter wind, and noisy aeroplanes directly overhead.
Continue reading “do not adjust your screen”
Outside open windows
blossom clouds the orchard;
my dustpan is full of pollen.
Alternatively, and more in keeping with the haiku spirit:
through open windows
apple blossom;
yellow dust on the floor
While others bundle and bunch
under umbrellas, shrug
into pak-a-macs and hunch deep
into their collars, their faces
scrunched, gurning
against the elements, she
pokes tongues
at raindrops and laughs
glitter from her hair.
In the UK we are used to hearing that “April showers bring May flowers”, an expression that apparently can be traced to its earliest known form – Continue reading “april”
Now that the weather’s improved and the council workers have managed to get out to do some jobs around the village, they’ve finally put in new lamp posts down by the river. Proper wrought iron ones that cast soft yellow light quite unlike the unnaturally white blare from the UFO-type double-headed farolas they put along by the polideportivo during a lull in the storms a month or so back.
Set against the snow-pocked backdrop of the Sierra de Gredos, the new Narnia-style lamp posts make me think of the Pevensie children helping Aslan banish the White Witch and release Narnia from the long winter.
They’ve also brought to mind a poem from a few years back:
Continue reading “light and hope”
don't confuse the narrator 