Winter Poem by Roy Stannard

When Winter dons its black cap

and passes judgement on Autumn

and the landscape loses its colour certificate

I can trace the Summer synapses in the leaves

shorting in miniature Nagasakis

as the ground melts into uncertainty beneath my feet.

The flower negatives freeze into graven images

that no-one can hear but all can feel

This is the bitter seasoning spooned by designer ladle

We count the minutes of daylight like poll station misers

And watch birds shiver in mid-flight

Sometimes the time of year becomes a time of life

As we read the meteorology

And protest as the sundial ratchets out our fate

We sniff the spirits

hovering above the heather blankets on Rodmell Down

As they absorb us into their private mythology

So many beaten paths trodden by beaten men

Splinters of nearly victories stream by the hardworn path

December pedestrians discover a spring in the step

to ordnance our way into the future

Provisioned against the cold in the souls

of the waking, sentient dead

enjoying the golden lottery ticket of their birth

in their far away Westminster palaces

where there is no Winter

written out of some long forgotten manifesto

when principle became pragmatism

and faith could be fathomed.

And now we tremble in the face of Winter

But in that shivering lies the first spasm of chlorophyll

biology and squalling protest

Reaching selfishly for a measure of selflessness

Springing from the ground in a kind of baptism

Because even in this special death,

there is the first baby wriggle of life.


5th December 2012