January.

The tendril fingers of cold stroke
Softly down your wind-kissed skin,
And remind you that many more days
And nights will pass before the
Sun's warmth will chase them away.
The dead leaves that carpet the path
Have stopped dancing in the autumn
Breeze and are now sluggishly
Clinging to the ground, and turning to
A slippery mush in the relentless rain.
The skeletal branches of the leafless
Trees wave in submission to the winter
Winds, and call a hoarse and deadened
Greeting to the first fall of snow.
Evening falls early, and morning is long
In rising, the day dull and thuggish
Under its cloak of steel grey cloud.
And yet, in the growing bud, the shoot
Just creeping through the cold and wet
Earth, the yellow on the gorse, there
Is still a promise that spring will
Not be so long in arriving.

(c) 2ndwitch, 04/01/2017

Falloch

It fell as rain, tears from the clouds, or as
Snow perhaps, soft flakes of sadness, blanketing
The winter ground, and touching the pine needles
With gossamer wings as it passed.
It slowly dripped from branch to branch,
Passing down towards the pine-barren ground
Below, and then through peat a slow seepage,
Until the burden it created was too much for the
Hill to carry, and then it flowed into the stream,
And started a journey past reed and stone,
Down past dyke and track, growing ever
Swifter, and press-ganging more to join
The river now, as it chattered and splashed
Over rock and grass, past trees and
Into the valley of pools and falls.
A torrent now, grown of the land it
Traveled through, and it crashes over the
Lip of the falls, a cascade into a deep,
Peat-dark pool, cold and unrelenting
Onwards to the loch, whose arms are
Open to welcome every cloud-tear-drop.


(c) 2ndwitch, 28/12/16

A thought.

I opened my eyes and looked out of the window
And I had a thought . . .
I wondered it is was raining.
And it was.
Hey ho.
Mind, it would have been raining
Even if I had not thought
So really that proves that
Thinking is a waste
Of
Time.


Sometimes!

(c) 2ndwitch, 02/05/16

Rainbow

For one brief moment in time, the arc of
Heaven bends, and touches earth.
But it is no virgin birth it heralds, nor
A redemption through a watery death.
This heralds a brief time when the world
Hangs in balance, and
Instead of worry we may wonder.

Diamonds, rubies, emeralds and amethysts.
Jewels of the mind.
Set in the silver loch and golden hills.

© 2ndwitch 06/01/15

The armour is not shining.

Raindrops, relentless and dripping, sleel-shod and silky,
Slipping and sliding down the window, the window through
Which the light softly creeps and sidles into the waiting room.
The window, and the room, together, they look at the rain, and
Ask it whence it came and why? They ask it if it stays, the sky
Fall tears, weeping from the carousing clouds, wine-sodden on
Summer mead, and bellicose with bee-bumbled memory.
Over again, the conversation ambles back and forth, forth and back
And forth and back again. Why? Who? Where? When?
When will I see you again?

© 2ndwitch