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

South Oxford, Easter Sunday – 6 images

Songthrush

Blackbird

Common pipistrelle

Geese settling

Hawthorn blossom

Robin

Trees motionless

Water slightly folded

Soft air

Overflight

 

First the sound of the geese breaks through.
The sky – what colour, too many –
the birds’ shadows
their weight all in the darkness repeating
their calls shifting source and destination
their descent the sound of light on water.

The light of the water is calligraphed by waves.
Mallards pass, their wings an echo of feathers dropping
the whistle of their passage through light,
their arrival masked by the calls of the geese.

Light shifts and resolves shadow.
Leaves’ shapes are formed then blanked
formulae beyond easy calculation.

Bats fast as the swallows,
all on the lip of leaving us
down across the water, which is stainless steel.
The smell is strong – mineral stink of developed economy;
the moisture of air losing its heat.

What is it I’m walking through?
Only light and trees, other species’ turn.
Existence of things overfaces my eyes.

 

 

Note: Again, this was meant to be a prose piece, but the poem insisted on itself (happened in the same week as “Floodplain“).