Enstone resident and local writer, Elizabeth Birchall, has recently written a seasonal poem. We are grateful to her for sharing it with us.

                        WINTER DAYS

Like Shakespeare’s schoolboy I trudge
Reluctantly to the ancients’ keep fit class.
Alone today I can look around. There
In the north-facing lea of a hedge
Protected from wind but subdued by cold
Squats a drab rosette of foxglove leaves,  clad
In the faintest down of frost. And so
Their summer roughness seems as soft
As ‘Rabbits’ Ears’ – for just a moment more.
The January sun nears its zenith
And all the village roofs have already
Lost their bloom.

Some days the sky, heavy as an elephant,
Hardly has energy to unload
Its drizzle. Then my garden cowers
In winter gloom. No bees fly but birds pick
Among the deadhead fuzz of asters.
Two weeks ago the cotoneaster tree
Cascaded brilliance from crown
To lowest branches; surely the feast
Would last the season through. Fieldfares, precise
As Mondrian, then cut away the red
In horizontal bands that left a lattice
Of black framing despondent light.
No spark of brightness –

Yet beneath dank layers of leaves beetles lurk
And brave pricks of green shelter until Spring.
Today the rotting mass is crisp and laced
With rime and the naked tree
Filigrees the blue.

Elizabeth Birchall.
January 2017

For information on Elizabeth’s published books, click on the images below, but do order them from our local bookshops!