Winter Dream

Winter comes in cold

As a routine coupling

And lingers wheezing in the yard.

Stoical starlings loiter

More out of habit than hope

Gathering in silent autonomy:

There is nothing to talk over.

The monochrome forest waits

Perhaps for the arrival

Of the first pallid colours of spring.

A single magpie sadly idles

Picking at an ancient carcass.

Something cries like a sprung trap

From a far spinney.

A hare breaks

Criss-crosses the granite grid

Of a field half-ploughed; turns;

Glances at the indifferent sun

Before merging into the hedge

That skirts the bank of a black brook

Sliding sluggish under frozen skin.

Then from its mossy bridge –

A crossbeam from the rafters of the old house –

You are suddenly there

Like an unplanned smile

Your bloodied satchel still warm

Your shoulders soft and easy

As the day before my birth.