Winter Arrives Poem by James Smith

The grey trunks the umber branches
Show black and stark against dull skys
As small garden birds eat fast and late
To see the night's long hours through
And rush to feed again in colder dawn.

Blue icey contours follow the edge of ponds
Water in it's liquid state so recently abundant
Becomes a rare and scarce element
To be sought out and guarded fiercely
And for the aquatic, life has indeed hardened,
Seen as the sudden clumsy landing of swans
Inelegantly skidding on frozen lakes and drains.

The parliament of crows, noisily strange,
Makes a shifting mosaic of black
Against the brown and amber clods
Of a ploughed and sullen field,
Once a meadow where contented herds
Grazed through warmer nights.

We puff out the feathers in our winter
Coats of fleece and foam and leather
Turn up the heating of oil and gas and wood.
Check on the elderly to assure their presence
For another day of quiet reading and sitting
Behind double glazing and layers of clothes,
But a harsher day awaits an increasing few
Those whose best refuge is a chilling doorway
And to survive the night, a visit from the soup van.