Spring

Spring

Fresh grass blankets the curves and hollows of the hill,

green made luminous by the morning sun.

It puckers and pits, marking  old scars

where men once sliced and dug and  picked.

Each thrusting blade hums like a generator,

and echoes the vibrato of the lambs.

Cloud shadows  tumble down the hillside,   

 leap the dry stone walls

and dance  into light again.

Rabbits  dash between bursts of rushes.

And a miasma of gnats swirls above

fast drying puddles.

And beyond  the crest of the hill

 where trees froth with buds  and fizz  like pylons,

ramblers follow ancient routes, or stray to

where sphagnum moss

cushions their tread and

where curlews call out a long song and skylarks'

sweet  notes fall .

Winter

Fog rolls like a lava flow down snow heavy hills.

Freezing.  Bleeding white on white. Crushing the

colour out of the land. A liminal landscape.

A blurred elemental boundary like a

a rubbed out pencil mark on an envelope.

A faded  spectral address.

The muffled chords of distant traffic underscore

the  howling winds. A white noise that drowns

the bleat of the sheep on the high slopes.

Stoic and still, their fleeces  frozen,  they huddle  like

temporary statues. Soft  breathe breaks the brittle air as they

drift shoulder to shoulder against the dry-stone, snow blown wall

and wait  to labour their lambs in to the world.

And beneath the snow the spring swells.