Winter Poems
In addition to the recipe book I found in church recently was a second-hand copy of ‘A Poem for Every Winter Day’, edited by Allie Esiri. Despite having attempted a sort of Advent Calendar of seasonal poems in the past, there are a great many in this book that I had never come across. It also continues right up until the end of February - just the months when poetic remedy is arguably needed most - with two poems for each day, often creating marvellous connections between old and new. Today, for example, the two poems are Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Winter Time’ - ‘Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,/ A frosty, fiery sleepy-head…’ - and Benjamin Zephaniah’s ‘Talking Turkeys’ - ‘Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas/ cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun…’
Later, in January, I look forward to the combination of one of Winnie the Pooh’s ditties -
On Thursday, when it starts to freeze And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees, How very readily one sees That these are whose - but whose are these?
…with Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ - the two poems having unexpected parallels in their evocation of seeing and yet not knowing.
This image, from Thomas Hardy’s ‘Snow in the Suburbs’, made the children stop and smile (yes, I was reading aloud to no apparent audience):
A sparrow enters the tree, Whereon immediately A snow-lump thrice his own slight size Descends on him and showers his head and eye And overturns him, And near inurns him, And lights on a nether twig, when its brush Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
The end of term at last, and we have successfully navigated the intense programme of nativity performances, Christmas jumper days, non-uniform days, community carols, brass band concerts, Rainbows parties, and mince pie making. In between the downpours the whippets race up the hill and, on their return, steal the sausage roll of the carpenter who is upstairs trying to make our sash windows work. Walking to the post office with a parcel I see four horses tied up outside the pub opposite and can almost imagine myself in a different age. ‘I think it had better go First class’ I say, and she laughs at me.
Ella Risbridger writes on her Substack: ‘If you are feeling daunted by the season, buying a big Christmas tree is a mighty gamble … and sometimes you just are trailing behind you something that belongs in a forest, as heavy and unwieldy as your mood.’ Buy a small one! she advises. Even better, I potted up last year’s small (live) tree which has grown by about one centimetre, and is shortly coming inside again - hopefully it will not die of shock surrounded by our new radiators…
Happy Christmas!
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