Winter Light

Snow confines the earth,
colours it not entirely white

but with refracted shades,
blue with cold, breathless.

Trees hold back a sky
where ice is made by nothing
but remembered dust falling 

through cloudless distance.

Green branched, Scots pine,

hemlock and cypress,

larch and bare birch saplings

bend with old snow melting.

The brown stems of autumn
stoop over crystalline drifts,
sweeping thin furrowed arcs

where the wind last blew them.

Faint tracks of beast and human

lead to a semblance of home,

to some burrow, sett or building, 

creature comfort in the night.

Late sun on trunk and tree-bark,
in flecks of light, leaves its warmth
in fissures, litters the mounded snow
with shadows shaped like hope.

© BH, 2021

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There has been snow on the ground for seven weeks… and cold. Outside, despite the conditions underfoot and the windchill, the woodland light has been beautiful. Walking the track we’ve beaten through the snow and ice over hose weeks, a track shared by deer, hares and small rodents, thoughts have gone to the coming spring.

It is under the snow already and, as the days lengthen, is coming despite the wind and weather we think is here forever.

The image is based on a watercolour sketch by my wife…