Manoeuvres In The Snow

Preternatural Manoeuvres In The Snow

Now what is this manoeuvre someone tried out in my drive?

Trying out a galliard, or perhaps more apt a jive?

They say to travel hopefully is better than to arrive;

They’ll be lucky though at this rate to emerge from it alive!

Thought for the Morrow

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‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.‘
King James Bible . . . Matthew 6:34. ‘Sermon on the Mount’

Yes … Tomorrow is another day
One more locked-down day to bear
While for me the world outside attempts to hide from view
Yet I know that
Somewhere The sun shines,
while elsewhere snow’s warmth blankets the tumbling hills
The rain is working its vernal wonders in the forest
and the world’s waves beat upon its brackish shores

My life’s sideshow cowers in lockdown’s shade
The life I once learnt to live fades
And a new one awaits
Granted by science and by human endeavour
A new path to wend – to explore
A road less travelled
which I must learn to love
The old well-tbeaten ways no longer lead to certainty
only to danger and distress
And so
amidst a tangled understanding of right and wrong
The future lives on in uncertainty’s haze

Some Times

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Some times it snows
Swirling in white
Drifts in the night
Pearls of soft light

Some days it rains.
Wetness unceasing
Clouds are releasing
The heavens above

And some times the wind
Moans through the trees
Only heaven sees
How life will react

For life will go on
Regardless of me
Not till I cease to be
Will the world be set free

But always it shows
How godliness grows
And nobody knows
How all life will end

As The Year Ends

WHB : Pen & Ink – 2018

AS THE YEAR ENDS

Dark the swollen river runs
Under the bridge’s shades of grey.
Slate sky condemns the passive scene
Draining colour from the day.

Tree silhouettes outline my view
Their winter ribs bared to the frost
December bids the old year gone
With no regrets for what is lost. 

The year expires; bid it goodbye, 
It brought distress, re-kindled fears,
It promised much it failed to give,
Left little hope and many tears.

So now, in hope of better times,
Tomorrow holds the future’s key.
New perspectives flood my view
Blue skies as far as I can see.

A WINTER’S TALE

Let me steal the midnight’s silence,
The stillness of the dawn,
The dampness of the morning grass,
As one more day is born.

Let me tread the crisp new snow
And breathe the icy blast;
Match my step to winter’s wind,
Relive those pleasures past.

For I must reach another goal
Fate’s purpose to pursue.
Life has been short and gone too soon
My devils to subdue.

And when my grave has opened up
My body to receive
Already mildew on my heart
And few there’ll be to grieve.

 

 

New Year – A Two Word Tale – #8

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New year
Cold night
Snow falls
All white

Hot fire
Scots pine
Church choir
Mulled wine

Bright hearth
Warm heart
First foot
New start

 

My ‘Two Word’ Verses

Number eight  in my series of short verses 

 

 

 

Sara Teasdale – ‘A Winter Night’

 [  No.70 of my favourite short poems  ]

Winter Night … Pen & Wash – WHB

A Winter Night

My windowpane is starred with frost,
The world is bitter cold tonight,
The moon is cruel, and the wind
Is like a two-edged sword to smite.

God pity all the homeless ones,
The beggars pacing to and fro.
God pity all the poor tonight
Who walk the lamp lit streets of snow.

My room is like a bit of June,
Warm and close-curtained fold on fold,
But somewhere, like a homeless child,
My heart is crying in the cold.

 

by Sara Teasdale

 

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NOTES:  (adapted from Wikipedia) . . . 

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933) was an American lyric poet.  She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouti, and used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger after her marriage in 1914.  . . .  From 1911 to 1914  Teasdale was courted by several men, including the poet Vachel Lindsay, who was truly in love with her but did not feel that he could provide enough money or stability to keep her satisfied.  (In 1914) she chose to marry Ernst Filsinger, a long-time admirer of her poetry  . . .  In 1918 she won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1917 poetry collection ‘Love Songs’  . . .  In 1933, she died by suicide, overdosing on sleeping pills.  Lindsay had died by suicide two years earlier.

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‘Thaw’

‘Winter at a Cumbrian Farm’ … Pen and Ink – WHB. 2017

(Poem No.31 of my favourite short poems)

A poem by Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

A very short poem, perhaps the shortest of my favourites.   Unseasonal as it may be, ‘Thaw’ nevertheless merits its place in any list of beautiful short poems, and I do not apologise for including it here, in the middle of a beautiful Spring season.   Edward Thomas wrote some of the finest poems of the early twentieth century, many of them composed between 1914 and 1917, that is during the course of World War I.  He eventually lost his life at the Battle of Arras, aged only 39, in 1917.    He is often thought of as a War Poet, but in fact many of his poems dealt with the beauties and vagaries of the natural world.  Perhaps his best known poem, also short, is ‘Adlestrop’. (q.v.).  Below I quote the four lines of his poem ‘THAW’ . . .

 

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

Edward Thomas … 1878 – 1917

The DARK and the LIGHT

Winter Farm … Ink – WHB – Feb.2017

Wintertime
today
I found myself
following a blind man
with a stick
this morning
in the shopping mall
he bumped into a white fence
surrounding a display

He stumbled
muttering to me
as I asked if I could help
“I can see a black line
but I can’t see a white fence
why do they
make these fences white?”

A blind man
fearing white
desiring the dark

Shopping Mall, Surrey … Photo -WHB Feb.2017

Wintertime
snowtime
and out in the fields
if it is not white
it is black
silhouettes are for the winter
as well as the twilight
black against the white
darkness loses silhouettes

As the snow settled
I wondered
could I see white
or could I see only the black
the black giving definition
white reduced
to filling the spaces in between
not colourless
devoid of colour
contrast emphasised
no subtlety
but strength
black has become the positive
black bringing context
and meaning
against the white backdrop

As with the blind man
it is possible
for the darkness
of winter
to bring
conviction
certitude
and hope.

My Cold-hearted Lover

CHAPTER  I

My cold-hearted lover has gone
She left me this wreath in the snow.
She said if I changed,
My life re-arranged,
It might be worth letting her know.

Those years we have lingered together;
Those times I have thought we were one;
But now it would seem
That was merely a dream,
A mirage now dwindled and gone.

For when the snow melts in the sun
No longer will our love exist.
Just a moment of fun,
A brief glimpse of the sun,
Just a chapter of love in the mist.

So a new life awaits me I’m hoping,
One without ties or distraction.
What I’m looking for,
What I’d love and adore,
Is an ending with deep satisfaction.

 

CHAPTER  II

 

 You remember those verses I wrote
Just a couple of moments ago?
Well I’ve got a confession,
It’s taught me a lesson,
I do jump to conclusions I know.

In fact I had got it all wrong;
She’d never intended to go.
She said when she went
She never had meant
To cause me a great deal of woe.

So what can a bloke like me do?
And can I pretend it’s not so?
Can I be uncouth,
And tell her the truth,
And say that I really must go?

For I didn’t take too long to find
Someone else to be with for ever.
Who never says no,
And who strokes my ego,
A much less intolerant lover.

So it’s no good her saying she’s sorry
Soon after she threw me right out.
She knows I’m respectful,
In no way neglectful,
It’s not as though I’m a big lout.

So I consider now that’s it’s over
I didn’t do bad from the deal.
I get a new dolly,
While she keeps the holly,
I tell myself that’s just ideal.