WRITE OF SPRING

This morning, as I stepped outdoors into crisp sunshine, I felt an intimation of spring. 
As it’s still February, this was clearly a mirage and simply wishful thinking, but nevertheless I returned home, buoyant and full of optimism, like a child with a jarful of grasshoppers.
In Bordeaux Bay, the tide was high and a flotilla of Brent geese, transients at this time of year, bobbed on the tranquil water. 
Gulls patrolled the granite sea-wall, cold-eyed and noisily arrogant. Oyster-catchers hurried along the shoreline like nervous waiters. On the far shore a dog was playing in the shallows. 
The early light gave the smaller islands, Herm, Brecqhou and Jethou, the appearance of being a painted backdrop to a stage-set rather than solid, habitable places.
Impending spring notwithstanding, summer-past and summer-yet-to-come both seem as distant as those islands.
I wrote this poem last spring. It deals with re-awakenings but also addresses my abiding preoccupation with the end of things.

HIBERNATION



Hibernation over, they wake
hungry. Then swiftly re-engage
in animal things: so the cycle
begins again. We understand that.

Is it fanciful to wonder
if they dream? Or is their slumber
incomprehensible, like death,
devoid of sense of anything?

Click here: Igor Stravinsky

Click here: The Rite of Spring