Driving Home

A marauding sky creeps over the skyline
Dramatising the moorland ridge;
Silver- fingered branches 
Steal the show
As their naked forms 
Stand sentinel on the banks; 
The moss - green of the holly
Boasts proudly against the
Impending darkness;
Sharply focused
The eye is drawn
To the silver lane snaking the   homeward mile 
As the moor vanishes
Blotted out
And heavy drops 
Land on the windscreen
Dispersing sideways.
And the rhythmic beating 
Begins.

Beyond the Blackened Pane

Beyond the blackened pane 
Winter’s grip is strengthened 
Through fingered stealth
An iron clad armour
Drawn across the land
I feel its cunning-
The fire burns more brightly
In the grate,
A deeper red 
To its core;
The heaviness of night
Is carried
Only the setting moon with painted halo 
Peeps between the fluted clouds
To break the steel;
And our star
From black to indigo 
Intensely builds the dawn.


Yuletide Sleep

When against earth a wooden heel
Hammers aloud as stone on steel; 
When the Yuletide days of light
Seem most indifferent  to that of night;
When the wind pounds, rattling the pane 
And the sky relinquishes its  frozen rain; 
When stripped,the trees, seize ghostly forms
Standing sentinel on the lawn;
When bare stained fields harden at last
Iron-flawed cracks from ice are  cast; 
When the earth is tired, worn,cross and old 
Oh to hunker down out of the cold!
Artist Jessica Boehman
Snowwolfs Woodland Nook

Dream like a child

I dream of clouds - 
Those castles in the sky;
Wide open spaces and sloping meadows
Rich with summer flowers
Of a picnic beside a babbling brook
Of painted landscapes - pastoral scenes
I dream of looking up into the endless blue
At the vapour trail of a jet up high
I want to dream like a child

Because to dream is to hope
And hope keeps us strong.
And ...we’re past the shortest day!


Solstice meets Advent

The last solstice of the year
Obsidian and bleak
The fog all consuming
Dense and rain -clad 
Droplets running down the glass 
Channelled down. 
The celestial ‘Christmas Star’ 
Of this millennium 
Obscured
And hidden 
Announcing the advent of 
Christmas 
Also eclipsed by 
The bleakest of news
Borders closed
Nowhere to go
Tiers of restriction
Mirroring
That real story
Two thousand years ago
When everything was closed
Everything tricky
And Heaven came down to Earth.


Night Running

Running has taken a new form since the evenings have become so dark, even before six .

It takes ages to get ready – head torch , fluorescent jacket and nifty lights for the back of my ankles in green and red ( can never remember which way round for port and starboard)!

Once out – it’s great . Total freedom . I’m running slightly slower on account that I can’t really see far in front of my feet and the lanes are running in water. Tonight was a gentle 5.5 km. Despite heavy showers, I stayed dry – unlike yesterday when I got soaked over half an hour.

I am so thankful to feel safe running in the lanes.

Advent

Visitors bring their esoteric truths;
Friends their empathy’s are quickly shared;
Not one,but many, think by chance a country so could run.
What of these problems
Of the  year?
Maudlin talk from television screen
Broadcast hourly into every home;
When lockdown lifts this time tomorrow
New tiers to grasp
Wrangling in every sphere;
Oh to leave the record that is spun
To head outside into quiet stillness there;
To feel my feet on sodden winter soil;
The natural degradation of the year;
The rhythms that propel us through the seasons
By one who order out of chaos formed.
To Him we wait in patient expectation 
His advent how we need it so much more.