During the festive season I did manage a few scribblings. They include a poem commissioned for our village church festival and a series of random images, where one thought randomly leads to another in what you might call a stream of consciousness.

WINTER TABLEAUX

The weight of it heavy in the air,
like a route march through dark woods,
shoes full of stones
and bones cracking and bending
A delinquent pressure spinning
fantasies from the blue yonder,
which will duly pass over
and be unremembered…until
the next snow falls

A blood-red flurry of wings,
ghosting through bleak memories
of snow-driven wastelands,
in turn questing and questioning
while feathers drip through snowflake air
to earth, resting like angel messages
on bare twigs and mounds of leaf mould

A sudden blizzard deafens
with its mute song,
swirling dizzily like a
fairground carousel horse
prancing to tinny chords
from a barrel organ, complete
with stuffed monkey and
fairground clown with his
disturbing grimaces..
I have to avert my eyes…..

A poem read at our church festival

A PARALLEL NATIVITY

It is bone-chillingly cold
Lakes and streams frozen solid,
Icicles hang from gutters and eaves
like the sword of Damocles
Spiders’ webs, starched like
city slickers’ collars,
cling rigid to fences and hedgerows.
Snow drifts pile high
as the driving blizzard bites,
Buildings glare like mausoleums
No transport, no public services
No end in sight for this bitter Winter
Animals and humans hibernate

Hope is draining from the refugees,
their faces blank with despair
Little chance of rescue now
in this snowy wilderness of ghosts
Life has been put on hold…….
Only a lone skater, clad in an Eskimo skin,
cuts through the thick ice,
skate blades flashing in the moonlight

Yet…..high overhead
a shooting star swoops
across the sky, momentarily
lighting up the old cotton mill
with its shattered windows,
its chimney stacks once black
with the soot of drudgery
A young female refugee
has given birth
and laid her whimpering child
in an old chest lined with straw,
swaddling him in her
threadbare peasant shawl.
The lone skater glides across
to peep through the window…..
His heart melts –
Love is here, love unashamedly
naked and hopeless,
yet so pure it thaws the snow