Snow.

The snow has fallen again
During the night, like a phantom
With hushed breath.
Almost up to my knees I plod
Up the Old Road,
Up into the Arctic landscape.
The wind whips the surface
To a fine stinging powder
Coating my clothes with a white crust.

A lone raven coarsely croaking
Tumbles in the bleached white sky
Like an escaped shadow.
There is nothing rare here,
Nothing exotic in this ‘howling wilderness’,
But the openness and the freedom
To breathe in the vast landscape
Gulping it down like the elixir of life
To taste a harsh tranquillity.

Down on Edgemoor Lane, where
The hawthorns line the road
I watch the blackbirds gorge
On the now wizened dark red berries.
The birds are probably from Scandinavia,
Vikings from across the North Sea
Pillaging our abundant fruit.
Four fieldfares fly over,
And a small flock of greenfinch
Fill the top of beech tree.

Soon I reach the churchyard.
The headstones seem to rise
Out of a white frothing sea
Like black teeth. The mistle thrush
Is in the holly, protecting each berry
With indignant zeal from marauding
Blackbirds. Rosehips glow starkly
Beneath the early streetlight
And the cold is now as sharp
As a blade as I climb the hill
For home, slipping and sliding
In the snow.

Listening.

I stand like a heron in the shallows
The cold water lapping my legs;
The breeze rattles the reeds
And the leaves mutter
Of summer spent.
I hear the moon
Sliding from grey cloud
Stars cutting through space
And the murmur
Of planets whispering
Like silk.

I listen to the bittern steal
Through the muddy water
Like a pilgrim, the moon
Now painting the water
With cold fire and old mythology.
I hear the crunch of pebbles
And flint as the fishermen
Take to their boats,
And the sea kissing
The shingle with song.

Then come the ghosts
With their hollow renderings
Their pointing fingers, and
The floorboards creaking;
The axe of man hacking through
Our forests, the plough
Scaring the land red.

I listen to the starlings
Sweeping in like a dark cloud
And the clatter of geese
Spilling from the north
Like a pack of baying hounds.
Then silence and the dream spent.
The sleeping water slick and dark
With abandoned summer dreaming.