David Selzer is a writer of poetry, prose fiction, screenplays and stage plays. He embraces digital platforms to share his work of more than fifty years… READ MORE


  • 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!

     

     

     

     


    6 responses to “A WINTER’S JOURNEY”


    1. Tricia Durdey Avatar

      Very beautiful images in all these poems, and a kind of simplicity in the telling that speaks clearly.

      1. David Selzer Avatar

        Receiving praise is always good – especially when it highlights what one is trying to do. Thank you.

    2. Ian Craine Avatar
      Ian Craine

      The 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.

      1. David Selzer Avatar

        I can see the three of you now along that road.

    3. Ashen Venema Avatar

      The 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.

      1. David Selzer Avatar

        Thank 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’.

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