Teasing

You tease us for a day,
give us blue sky
and a warm breeze,
once the early morning
chill and mist lift
from the combes
and hillsides.

You tease us into thinking
that because you are here,
have arrived,
it is safe for us to venture out,
walk footpaths,
climb tors,
stroll gardens,
enjoying the sights:
dangling catkins,
dancing snowdrops,
delicate crocuses,
and we are willing to be lulled,
so tantalising are your offerings,
for we want you to take from us
the sting of Winter.

You tease us with
a warming sun suspended
in a bright blue sky,
but it is a rouse
and Winter-weary
we are easily taken in,
blissfully trusting
the cold and gloom
are driven back,
so out we go unprepared
believing the promise
of a clear bright morning.

Then of a sudden
you raise dark clouds
upon the horizon
blotting out the blue sky,
warm sun-drenched breezes
forgotten in an instant
as sleet-bearing winds
lash out stinging our faces
before horizontal rain
descends in torrents
obscuring the view,
pursue us scurrying for cover.

You tease us into complacency,
for we are too eager to believe
harsh Winter is gone
replaced by gentle Spring,
gullible and optimistic,
we foolishly think
and unwisely assume
your gifts set forth in
dangling, dancing, delicate
crocuses, snowdrops, catkins
mean more than what they are:
heralds, signs and promises.

Teasing February,
every year on each bright day
when the sun warms
more and stays longer,
you catch us out,
tricking us into trusting you
the seasons have
well and truly changed,
and in so doing
hope for renewal
is kindled in our souls.

 

The Old Ways

The old ways the paths
we no longer fully understand,
folkways and ancestralways,
those based on superstition
those based on the tales of wise women
those based on reading the omens,
of following the signs attentively
of listening and watching
aware apprehensive anxious,
but trusting the truths revealed.

The old ways would be paths
confounding us who think we
know better nature’s workings,
because modernity’s teachings,
forgetting the mystery
ignoring the majesty
flaunting our mastery,
shelter us from our ignorance,
of what we fail to accept
refuse to acknowledge.

The old ways are harsh paths
whose realities would stun us
whose practises would shock us
whose consequences would startle us
and leave us in our ignorance exposed,
for we have forgotten
the power of belief
the strength of conviction,
having left them behind
favouring what we consider
the strength of rationality
the power of proof.

The old ways were dangerous paths,
not always leading to anticipated destinations,
the results were not always consistent,
but neither are ours
cloaked in the respectability
of science’s experimental methodologies,
for we still wander lost
unable and unwilling to know
read the signs and accept the omens
within us and around us,
unable to name our true paths
and thinking we can make our own ways.

Written reflecting on this image —

one I have seen in several places not far from where I live, including the garden on the hill behind my cottage, there it was a magpie.