A WINTER’S JOURNEY
Driving northwards, driving homewards, we pass
inundated pasture – mercurial
in shape and colour – its sheen reflecting
the late morning’s rare roseate sky.
Bared trees and bushes are a dull amber.
In time, cloud cover becomes leaden –
then snow falls: the downy flakes like weightless
seeds, which the windscreen wipers flail clear
again and again. The empty fields fill,
remorselessly, as early evening comes.
Miles on, the snow no longer falls. It has
settled. The ancient, snow-filled woods are lovely,
luminous. How soon we will be home
in warmth and light! How far we have come in love!
Tricia Durdey
December 29, 2017Very beautiful images in all these poems, and a kind of simplicity in the telling that speaks clearly.
David Selzer
December 30, 2017Receiving praise is always good – especially when it highlights what one is trying to do. Thank you.
Ian Craine
December 30, 2017The first paragraph in particular reminds me of car rides with my parents in the dead days after Christmas (they were back then). We’d be driving back from Farndon and the fields would be dotted with extensive wet patches, immense puddles. We’d pass silent farmhouses and barns and a place called Crewe, the second of that name in the County of Chester.
David Selzer
December 31, 2017I can see the three of you now along that road.
Ashen Venema
December 31, 2017The sky in Surrey darkens as I read your poem, which shows a lovely moment of surprise, like the other morning, when my garden sparkled white, for a few hours. Having lived through many winters of deep snow in Bavaria, I always rejoice in the beauty, no matter how short-lived.
David Selzer
December 31, 2017Thank you, Ashen. The piece was based on one in particular of our many journeys from Guildford back home to Chester. While I was writing the poem I was thinking of Frost’s ‘Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening’ – https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening – and Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’.