Friday 8 January 2010

Frozen stiff!

I am becoming resigned to a life in a frozen waste, I no longer look for thaw. although it has only been a matter of weeks and days it seems like years. I am scott of the antartic, I am an inuit, I am a yeti. i long for the colour green, to squelch in warm mud again, to see a worm or a mole hill ...even a slug! Beneath the thick layer that smothers my flwoer beds I wonder if the green shoots of spring that I spied before Christmas have perished or if they will be t here after the great melting. I have not left the farm, the road is sheet ice that I cannot hope to stay upright on; instead I trudge the fields and garden feeling like the only woman left alive. The ponies, so glad to see me bringing their morning and evening hay steam like engines, they ignite a poem, here it is.

In the lea of the hedge
I hear them
crunching frozen hay,
heads down,
bodies steaming
in chilly sun.
I sprinkle summer scents,
on winter ground.
They push against me,
hot breath stealing
into pockets, cold lips
seeking warmth.
The old tin bath is
brimful of ice;
With a brick I fragment
solidity into
shards of water that
cascades like jewels.

No comments:

Post a Comment