Delayed Spring

Weathering the winter

I wrote the first draft of this poem years ago. Our sickly and aged elder tree had just fallen in a winter storm and it felt like a good metaphor for other things that were happening in my life at the time. The challenges imposed on us in recent years seem to fit too, I think.

It is New Year’s Day 2025 and it will not get light here in the the southeast of England today. It is a foul morning and my not-a-New-Year-Resolution to get outside more is looking shaky. We will light fires indoors to dispel the gloom.

Happy New Year!

DELAYED SPRING

The snow has returned, blown in on Siberian winds
to bleaken a world that waited, poised for spring.

Braced against its stinging whorls, skin tensed and grey,
we keep our daily appointments, faces grim.

The first spectral fall enthralled the children within us,
an unexpected thrill that spread without a sound

as we watched from the window. The landscape changed its form,
enfolded then distorted by deceptions of the light.

The diseased elder fell as we slept, succumbed to its parasite ivy.
Tonight a winter cremation will warm us with its final glow

while we know that spring must come. By instinct we go on,
frostbitten but undefeated, faces raised to seek the sun.


Peppy Scott