Sky

Sky - swept clean of clouds
- an early Spring clean?

Imagined alarm

Fallen small branch
lichen-striped
emulating adder
or some other poisonous snake

Compensation for the loss of light

Darker yes, but oh the joy of striding out
no longer feared of falling.

Overnight, again

Snow gone - except for the piles painstaking and laboriously cleared from drives by the super-dutiful (who seemingly never remember that it will go of its own accord as and when)

Overnight

So cold last night, the shed donned striped pyjamas

While doing the crossword

"Why have cotton when you can have silk?" the chocolate advert asks,
I conclude I'm just a cotton kind of woman -
too rough-fingered for the (perceived) luxury of silk.

From my window

Some sort of silent signal has brought seagulls swirling in from all directions to circle above the golf course - someone eating sardine sandwiches?

For those who don't have to go to out work

Thick toast crunching from the road beside the house
(where the sun never gets to shine, this month)
is good enough advice to stay in bed.

Involuntary overhearing

I wonder, after visiting four of them this morning,
does the calibre of shop volunteers' conversation
reflect the charity itself?

Seeing paintings

Without my glasses, and before the sun full rises, the scraggy dun poverty of the hawthorn hedge across the road is reminiscent of Luke Fildes' 'Applicants for admission to a casual ward'

A better class of observation

I'm reading Anne Enright at the moment - her observation of details, recollection of emotions, feelings responses, her ability to write down and recreate are such that I feel as if I've walked through my life blind.

Weather forecast

Having, less than five minutes ago, checked and found the north-east isn't due for snow today,
I've just seen three tiny flakes floating surreptitiously past the window.

Jewelled

Frost-encrusted spider's web
two feet long, or more
from gutter to the corner of the house
and another, much more obvious
white against the pinewood of the shed

From the bedroom window

Curtains, half drawn since December,
kitchen bllind now fully up -
my neighbour's returned from her Christmas in Canada.

Walk in the snow

Giant strides (bigger than mine)
and an apparently levitating dog
allow me to play detective.

Momentary confusion

Strangely fringed pink smudges,
on the far side of a pint of elderflower cordial
- my fingertips.

Cold feet

The light behinds the window blinds not sufficiently tempting to raise them and let in the cold

shaft, web, calamis, brachis and barb

An asymmetric feather, light and lying in the road, sent me searching for the names of parts thereof.

From the bedroom window

The upward curving branches of the ash tree
clamouring hopelessly toward the uncharitableness of the white sky

struggling today ...

When the wind is in the west
noise from the trains and the planes get louder