30th November

The sun is out 

The sky is cloudless, the darkness has lifted 

there will be stars tonight :

rain a memory – all too recent a memory  

The land is sodden, every field a marsh, each stream a river 

The trees are now bare 

But in the winter light are richly coloured

The tops are green and bronze

The winter blue of the sky shows the filigree of the birch

Fingers reaching up

Here and there a pine tree – green and fresh

One there cut for the Christmas tree for the town.

A cloud of tumbling jackdaws, clear sharp outlines

Where the sun has not fallen, the hoar frost remains

Soft shapes against the soft wet dark earth

Those trees seems to be still green – but that’s the moss

My side of the valley is the cold side, the air sharp

but the leaves of the sage so soft to the touch

a fur of ice added to the natural softness

As the cars pile up in the road outside the school

Some trees and now some more have their brief

Time in the sun ended as the sun falls below the hill 

The valley is now dark, the high empty fields

Still cling onto the light for a few more minutes 

Now the pale blush of evening seems to reach from the high grasslands 

Peach and rose, slowly darkening deepening to pink and orange and red

The morning woke to grey mist which spread over the land

Advent starts on the morrow