| My neighbour’s garden
pond lies under thick black ice.
Where are the children?
Ted Slade |  |
 | Winter waits behind the walls.
Copper turned to white
Freezing colds' kaleidoscope. Salvador Oria
Buenos Aires |
| | |
| | |
Stormy weather I remove my black leather shoes,
And walk down towards the sea,
The impulse to keep walking is there,
But I stop when I feel waves lap at my toes.
Everything is calm and gentle,
But it can change within a second.
As the clouds gather,
The waves start to roar,
They are rising higher,
Than they’ve ever done before,
And I just stand there helpless,
As rain continues to pour,
All I want is to be normal,
No less and no more.
The storm destroys all it can find in me,
Hope, optimism and peace,
And like the waves constantly rolling away,
I let the emotions leave,
There’s no point putting up a fight,
I don’t have the strength to win.
As the clouds re-gather,
The waves continue to roar,
They are rising higher,
Than they’ve ever done before,
And I’m standing there helpless,
As rain continues to pour,
All I want is to be normal,
No less and no more.
© Carrie Anne Bonnington
Winter Tale
Harsh heron call echoes over reed bed to water sedge.
& hoar frost on tall-seeded heads, shivers.
Skies of ice stand very still as snow clouds glide,
Slowly, in distant procession.
Everything lies taut and quiet now,
Not daring to move lest the ice cracks
& they break to fall at the feet of winter,
Being lost forever ,
When the clouds decide to fall.
Wesson7
Snowflakes
Early they came,
Swept out of arctic skies
Following the russian swans,
Falling softly in a myriad tracery of
Snowflower petals on Winter's bleak,
and muddied inland shore.
Quietly covering ancient paths
& weary homeward track.
Crystalline plume moths
fluttering out memories.
Loving laughter in crunching snow.
Faery notes from icicle bells,
And a snowman,
Made taller than the prancing child,
With wide stone smile, and twiggy arms uplifted,
to lighten the peal of passing years
& dance beside me,
homeward bound in the snowflake show.
From Norfolk winters 1987-88 Wesson (E.C.)
Winter Solstice
Our planet turns around. In consequence
each spot on earth receives the same amount
of sun: six months. Location makes no difference
except for how that six months is shared out.
Pity for once the equatorials:
their endlessly exact twelve-hour days.
We live in hope. Our Winter darkness goes
straight in the daylight savings bank, and pays
for our Midsummer eighteen hours of sun.
So in my own dark hour, I invest.
Present privations are not joys just gone,
but on deposit: my next year's behest.
As Winter darkness buys Midsummer's Day
I suffer loss, that I may make it pay.
Hancock 03.12.03
From my window
It doesn’t take much snow to get the kids out on the hill in the park behind our house! As soon as the ground has got a thin covering of white they are there, with their sledges and anything else that will slide and slither down the slope. One year we had some really good snow, and every child from this side of the town made a beeline towards the park. They used sledges, tin trays, plastic sacks, anything. My two visiting grandsons borrowed my large metal baking tin, and joined in the fun.
There was a really good atmosphere up there – no aggro, no disagreements, just a really fun time. Some of the larger boys lent their sledge to my two, to have a really good run, the baking tray being rather hard to steer. Well, you couldn’t steer it at all, really, you were just as likely to go down in a spiral circuit as direct!
Its safe up there, too. There is a really steep slope for the bigger, braver children, but at the bottom it starts gently sloping upwards again, so there is no danger, and there are gentler slopes for the younger children. Some of the less prudent boys take a direct line through the trees, which leads straight onto the lake, but the snow is never so deep there, and we haven’t lost any yet!
One year, the sky stayed clear for days, and nights, and the bigger children were out there in the moonlight, sledging until midnight or later. The snow reflected the moonlight, of course, so it was almost as bright, if not better, as a dark January day!
But for real sledging, adults and larger children drive up to the Country Park known as Tegg’s Nose. There, there is a field designated the Sledging Field, long, steep, and with views right across the town, and, if it is a very clear day, as far as Liverpool. The farmer, or maybe its the Park authorities, I don’t know, puts a big soft mesh fence across the bottom, so no-one runs into the dry stone wall, which divides the sledgers from the rather blasé sheep in the next field. They’ve seen it all before.
Yes, we really can see all this from our window, though you need to be upstairs and with a pair of binoculars to see all the fun in the sledging field! But the park backs onto our garden!
I suppose if global warming really continues, all the snow fun will be gone in a very few years. Though of course, if you subscribe to the dwindling of the Gulf Stream theory, then we are in for another ice age...........
Dianthus
IT'S COLD HERE
.
winter's winds are always waiting
for the time of moist cold mating
and the offspring, ice and snow
blanket all the earth below
.
fence row fills with drifted hill
frosted branches freeze and still
shapes undreamed of in the sun
start and make new shadows run
.
across the places where once men
walked back and forth and back again
but now inhabit heated caves
within which now each one spring craves
.
yet faces out meeting coldness
yearning for their father's boldness
savoring their mother's vigor
martyring in winter's rigor
.
adventure lurks in cold severe
adventure which each man holds dear
as proof of masculinity
to measure his divinity
.
depression lives in icy form
repression builds in each a storm
that when warm days do reappear
recelebrates the end of fear
.
brulebilly
Sweet Slumber
In my dream I see a valley below
A soft silent blanket of white virgin snow
A cool crisp breeze
Whispers through leafless trees
As I look on
The shiver down my spine
Vanishes as a hand slips into mine
A loving smile and gentle touch
Warms, and means so much
On this wintery day
Together we are one
I am the moon, you the sun
My heart beats fast
Maybe this love is meant to last
For eternity...
Christine L. Coles,
©January 4th 2000
