winter – Page 10 – don't confuse the narrator

walk on by

In Spain, I lived for many years in a house where the main heating was provided by a log stove, so whenever I went out walking, I was always on the look out for fallen pine cones. When dry, pine cones – or, perhaps, fir cones – are highly combustible and make it so much easier to get a fire started. Now, although I’m living in a house with central heating, the instinct to gather kindling and cones remains, and the recent storms have strewn much temptation in my path.

Today I succumbed.

Well, OK, it isn’t quite a pine cone, but I reckon it would burn just as well.

I should have resisted, but I’m afraid my attention was snagged by all those prickly wooden “petals” and it was impossible to walk on by. So now there’s a rather glorious branch of a monkey puzzle tree about three foot long standing in the corner of my room.

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”

no movement but sound

I went out early today, but the birds must all have been awake long before me and when I left the house the noise in the street was startlingly loud for a Sunday morning. I suppose they were busy discussing air pressure and wind speed, temperature and flight paths or whatever it is that birds talk about before they get moving in the morning.

There was so much sound, but no movement and not a single bird to be seen even though the trees are bare of leaves and they must surely have been visible as dark blotches among the branches.

Telegraph pole silhouetted against sky at daybreak

I remember thinking as a child that the insulators on telegraph poles were birds perching; I reckon it was a reasonable mistake.
Continue reading

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”

circles

Black jacket & red scarf — ready for the revolution

“Bad governments bring bad weather,” says my aged mother, complaining that she hasn’t been out of the house for the last ten days. “Roll on the revolution.”

“So, what are you doing to further the revolution?” I ask.

Mainly, I’m trying to distract her from her woes, but I do think that if you’re nearly 90 and want the revolution to come in your lifetime, it’d probably be a good thing to be pro-active about it.

At first, she doesn’t think there’s much an old woman like her can do.

Then, “I could carry a placard.”

This is good: she’s no longer thinking – or complaining – about how cold and wet it is.
Continue reading “circles”