Looking Back at Winter

My winter language in that lockdown nature diary dwells less on the grey and dull, and more on the bright and cold.

11/1/2021
Geese by the river
Gleam of wet grass
Remembering frost on spiders’ webs

16/1/2021
Magpie on the peak of the roof against the blue sky…
Steam curling up from the fence in the sun

Yet my memory of that winter is full of days like this one on which I’m typing – sky of dark clouds, rain barely bothering to fall, cold breeze. Those are days where the weather is like the taste of a food so bland your appetite vanishes. There’s no spark, no drive to see, do or be.

And yet, since they seem to make up the majority of winter days, life still infuses them. For every day on which I made no reference to the weather, there are still creatures that stirred me to record them, to capture them alive, however briefly, in pen.

18/1/2021
Jackdaw flocks overhead, calls like pebbles hitting roofs. Settling in the tall bare trees behind houses.
Wren calling from knot of ivy round the fence

11/2/2021
Heron flying overhead, great square wings, yellow beak pulled back but set against the air
Red kites & blue tits

Maybe I remember it wrong – perhaps there were more days of icy sun or of turbulent rain. I’d rather have some wildness in the weather than the slog through days that never really seem to begin.

8/2/2021
White light through windows – snow. Just a crusting, colours showing through

9/2/2021
Frost on the cars Bright sun, water in the fields Yellow & green
Strange yearning to walk on crunchy frozen mud, cold wind on the cheeks, warm in winter clothes
Magpie in the trees opposite colours very clear
Going for a walk in the scrub land. Wading through flood water, catching in brambles…. Snowdrops stretching down the bank of the stream and into the water. Freezing cold…
Out on the basketball court, snow falling like hard pellets

Looking Back at Winter

Continuing through my winter lockdown nature diary.

After the first two entries, there’s a sketch of a poem that takes up a whole page of my notebook. I remember how it came a bit at a time, as though writing about people was hard in that grey weather. But then my next entry is its own poem. A found one perhaps, just observation, but the way it fell on the page seems satisfying, as though I’d poured paint with an idea in my head.

9/1/2021

Robins singing on my bike ride Blue tits Blackbird chip-chip
as darkness was falling on the far side of the river
Misty, grey darkness
Goose drifting on the Thames
Robin starting out in front of the bike, diving into leaves
Red kite in a bare tree by the A34 White patch bright on its chest dusty brown
Steel water Black shapes and shadows
Water on Port Meadow as night comes down

To me this sets off resonances, different threads that I can follow through the rest of the diary. Next time let’s follow a red thread, a string that leads to a kite.