Tuesday Poem - Winter Light

The season is wintering in.

Horizontal light
laid in long bars
across the russeting slope

reveals
the contours of the land
the fierce geography of rock
the patterning of sheep through bracken

lipped water-marks on sand

The mountain’s shadow
bruises the lake.

The cold is like loss:
a cramping hold on bone
muscle, thought,
spilling in from the east.

The air tastes metallic
like snow dissolving on the tongue.

This is the death month
December's Druid alphabet
that signified

the rebirth of the spirit.

An ash tree clumsy with unshed seeds,
a deer’s teeth grooved on the bark
a snowdrop spiking up through a dead leaf

And then the falling sun herds
the rocks into the long shadow
of winter night.


Feeling very wintry here in the north of England with temperatures diving below -15 at night and lots of snow and ice.   The poem is only a series of observations really - I need to do more work on it.  The photograph is of ice crystals on glass with the sun behind - taken this morning outside my office.

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