February Landscapes

This has been going round in my head in jumbled form for a week or two. Today I scribbled it down and pics of some of the things that made me think of it are in the mosaic.

February Landscapes

Melt-water skies still shroud the landscape,
chalky and opaque,
but there are days when the heavy grey,
empties into translucent blue,
the slow trickle of the thaw sings a counterpoint
against newly questioning bird-song
and quiet cascades of loosening snow
whisper change among the hedgerows.

The trees are still fretted silhouettes against the sky
but now with a drift of slender wands that wear a crimson haze.
Early snowdrops, surprised by the returning cold,
tremble numbly,
where a mild month ago they first danced in bloom.
Jagged shards of ice still fragment the paths and ruts,
glassy in the hollows, that the sun has not yet fingered.

But the leaden winter mornings, darkly settled for so long,
bleakly resisting the sunrise,
are now in different mood
 - readier to depart,
open to dissolving into earlier dawns of rose and cream and gold.

Frost still risks its fragile artistry on the ivy leaves,
knowing its creative nights are numbered,
but the owls again are noisy,
silent-winged, swift-calling among the fir trees,
searching for a Valentine.

We too begin to stir
among the Wednesday ashes of our colder days
and seek out newness and a quickened spirit,
seeing the tight vice of winter give,
against an emerging world that on the horizon
has glimpsed the Spring.