A poem from a snowy Christmas, though I think all I’ll see this year is rain. I wrote it at my smallholding in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, a few years ago.  I’d gone out on Christmas morning to let out the hens and feed the sheep after a night of snow.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and a joyful, creative 2014!

Snow fallen, frozen, melted, fallen.  Snow
laid up to the dykes like plumped-up pillows
at first light.  Each fencepost steeples
a white tower, while in the unclaimed stretches
in-between, some sheep wool snagged on barbed wire
is hoar-frosted like moss.

Snow fallen, frozen, melted, fallen.  Snow
in the wide field where moss pawed out by sheep
is hoar-frosted like wool.  Deep prints say
the fox travelled the sheep-track last night.
This morning woodpigeons coo from the white wood.
The lane’s impassable.  It’s Christmas Day.