Dear Readers, when I posted about spring poems a while back, sllgatsby shared this one in the comments. It’s not your normal spring poem, but it has some lines that seem so appropriate for the times that we live in that I wanted to share it more widely. See what you think.

Citizen of Dark Times

by Kim Stafford

Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.

When things go wrong, do right.
Set out by the half-light of the seeker.
For the well-lit problem begins to heal.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.

We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.
Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.
Prune back regret to let faith grow.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.

Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.
Keep seeing what you are not saying.
Plunder your reticence.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.

—from Wild Honey, Tough Salt

Well, no, but what we do have is a high-ish wind, and the Juneberry/Shadbush opposite is positively raining white petals. It always feels like such a waste when the blossom is blown off, but I wonder if, like leaf fall in the autumn, the petals detach more easily once the flower has been pollinated and/or is already fading? Either way, as I gaze out of the office window it looks as if there’s been a light fall of snow.

We used to have two of these trees very close to where I live, but one of them blew over at about this time last year.

Here it is in fine fettle…

And here it is leaning at a most peculiar angle last year…

And here it is after the inevitable high winds did their work…

The poor thing seemed to have some kind of fungal infection right where the trunk met the pavement, and it had snapped clean off. Since then, the tree pit has been tarmacked over so I suppose we won’t be getting a new tree, at least for a while.

The tree opposite is also leaning at a dodgy angle  – if it’s something to do with the way that the species roots, or if it’s just inadequate planting in what must be a fairly shallow site? And it seems to be getting worse. Here’s a photo from 2019…

And admittedly camera angles can be deceptive, but here’s a photo from today…Hmm, I’m not sure if it’s getting worse or not, what do you think, Readers?

At any rate, the white flowers will soon be replaced by very pale bronze new leaves, which turn green as they mature. The autumn colour is quite something too, so these trees really do punch above their weight as trees for small gardens or as street trees. Let’s hope that the one opposite manages to stay vertical for as long as possible.

Willow Tit (Poecile montanus) Photo By © Francis C. Franklin / CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30949154

Dear Readers, a few weeks ago I wrote about the remarkable comeback of the Cirl Bunting, and how the targeted research on this bird and its habits had enabled farmers in the West Country to change some of their farming methods in order to support its recovery. Alas, for the Willow Tit nobody seems to know exactly why it has declined by a shocking 94 percent during the last century, though there are plenty of theories.

This bird is described thus by Laurence Rose in ‘Into The Red‘,

“It’s a bull-necked, plain-clothed, rough-voiced hewer of wood: a no-bullshit plain-speaking rough-diamond worker. Keeps itself to itself. Doesn’t prance about for all to see (unlike some). Gets on with stuff, checking for rot, hacking out test holes, that kind of thing”.

And for sure, this bird hasn’t got the bright colours of the Blue Tit, the in-your-faceness of the Great Tit. It hid in plain sight until 1897, when ornithologists realised that it was a different species from the still-endangered but slightly commoner Marsh Tit. Partly, this was due to where it lives: it seems to have a love for wet woodland, and indeed some of its last strongholds were old colliery spoil slacks and areas of disused, damp, scrubby woodland, full of abandoned cars and fly-tipped dustbin bags. It just goes to show that animals just need the right conditions in order to do well, without any concern for our sense of what a beautiful landscape should look like. In this case, it’s all about damp, rotting wood that provides a nesting hole (which the bird hollows out itself). One theory is that these areas of wet woodland are being drained, or are drying out. Add into this an increase in the number of Blue Tits, who will take over the nest holes given half a chance, and the fact that woodpeckers predate on nestling tits of all species, and you can see how these factors could  contribute to the decline of the species.

However, in my British Birds magazine this month, a study of the complete extinction of Willow Tits in the Dearne Valley in Yorkshire pretty much discounts all these factors as a root cause. The area has not gotten any drier, and there has been no increased in either Blue and Great tit numbers or Great Spotted Woodpecker numbers. Furthermore, a very similar site nearby has at least twenty pairs of Willow Tits. Sometimes it’s a scramble to try to save a species from local extinction, and although a great deal of work has been done on this particular site, the bird seems to have gone from 70 territories in 2015 to none in 2023.

Incidentally, if any of my North American friends think the bird looks rather like a chickadee, that’s because it’s in the same genus, and so very closely related.

Photo By © Francis C. Franklin / CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31622934

Here’s the song of the Willow Tit, recorded in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland by Dave Pullan. What a sweet, sad sound it is.

And here’s something beautiful. The Back From the Brink project is trying to raise awareness of a number of endangered species through art and poetry. Local artist Linden Katherine MacMahon worked with the Astrea Academy in the Dearne Valley (where the recent study found that the bird had died out) to create a pamphlet of poetry, featuring both the Willow Tit and the Ancient Trees project. You can read what MacMahon has to say about the project here, and can have a look at the poetry here. There are some wonderful pieces of poetry and prose. Such imagination! And that’s  the skill that we’ll need, in the end, if we are to preserve species like this  – to imagine ourselves into the feathered body of a bird and see what straightforward science has missed.

Juvenile Willow Tit (Photo Wald1siedel, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Four-banded Flower Bee (Anthophora quadrimaculata)

Dear Readers, in a bid to ‘big-up’ the invertebrates that are so often overlooked when people think about animals, The Guardian has launched a competition to nominate your ‘Invertebrate of the Year’. But how could one possibly choose? From the super-intelligent octopus to the leopard slug, from the enigmatic New Forest Cicada to the innocent froghopper, our gardens and rivers and seas are full to the brim with fascinating life, most of which we know next to nothing about (unless they’re a ‘pest’ and we decide that we want to eradicate them). I wonder how many entomologists began by studying insects that they loved, and ended up planning how to poison them for a living?

I think it would be well worth nominating an insect – I’ve already nominated mine though it was a hard decision. But I think that the sheer range of possible species is almost more important than what wins (though I shall be mightily fed up if it turns out to be the honeybee, which, for all its sterling work is a most unimaginative choice, and practically a domestic animal to boot).

Here are a few that I considered. First up, the four-banded flower bee pictured above, because it is a fast, high-pitched, energetic little critter that is also mostly a Londoner (at the moment at least), and because it has green eyes, and that’s good enough for me.

And then there are jumping spiders in general, and the Fencepost Jumping Spider in particular. I love the way that, when you look at them, they look back at you. I love that they stalk their prey like tigers and then leap several times their body length to capture an unsuspecting fly. And they eat flies! Honestly, how could you resist voting for him?

Fencepost Jumping Spider (Marpissa muscosa)

How about a new arrival, the Jersey Tiger moth, with its Vulcan bomber-shaped wings, and caterpillars that feed on green alkanet, that most divisive of weeds?

Jersey Tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria)

Or the Emperor Dragonfly, surely the most adept flying insect of all?

Emperor Dragonfly (Anax imperator)

And to go completely off-piste, how about the leopard slug? What’s not to like about a slug that eats other slugs?

Leopard slug (Limax maximus) (Photo by Michal Maňas – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7984616)

Or, seeing as I am Bug Woman, how about a bug, like the froghopper who protects its youngsters in a bubble of froth?

Meadow froghopper (Philaenus spumarius) Photo by Charles J Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38317620)

Or the pondskater, that communicates with other pondskaters by vibrating the surface of the water at a certain frequency?

Pondskaters in flagrante (Photo by Markus Gayda)

But, in the end , it had to be my very favourite bees, the hairy-footed flower bees. There might be a bit of ‘recency effect’ about this, but this species is one of the first to appear in the garden in any numbers, and there’s so much to love about them, from the fact that the sexes are different colours, to the way that they fly around with their tongues poking out, to their loud and determined buzz, to the fact that they have such a short flight season – come summer, they’ll be gone. Don’t let me influence you though! And do vote – the more people vote for their favourite invertebrate, the more people will actually think about the little things that basically run the world.  And let us know your favourite invertebrate, and why. We can have our own little contest here!

Hairy-footed flower bee (Male)

Hairy-footed flower bee (Female)

Dear Readers, everything is budding and singing and greening up in Coldfall Wood, just round the corner from where I live in East Finchley. It’s true that it’s damp and muddy underfoot, but there is still the sound of bird song, including the flutey warblings of this male blackbird. I’m trying to remember which poet described it as having a ‘crocus-yellow bill’, but it’s exactly right.

And there was an unexpectedly friendly jay poking about too. Normally you get a quick flash of pink and blue and then they’re off – if you’re lucky, you get to see how rounded their wings are. They almost seem to float. That  electric-blue stripe on the wing psychedelic – so few animals are truly blue (and in fact these feathers reflect blue light rather than being blue themselves). Alas, the blue feathers have been cause enough for people to shoot them, as Mark Avery suggests in his article here. Technically, a jay can only be shot after non-lethal methods of control have been tried, but as people seem to be able to shoot golden eagles without being found and prosecuted, I imagine that the odd dead jay would be as nothing. Still, in urban ancient woods the jays seem to be thriving.

Jay

And then there are the wild cherries (Prunus avium), just coming into bloom. They look positively ethereal. I love how the one below is doing well in one of the coppiced areas, which is giving it a bit more light.

Overall, though, a lot of the wood has no understorey at all, as I’ve mentioned at least three times this week (sorry everyone! It just makes me sad).

Coldfall Wood

Still, generally most dead wood is allowed to rot in place (except where people are using it for dens) which leads to a fine selection of fungi, especially in autumn.

Standing dead wood near the stream

Someone was mentioning how ‘yellow’ the spring flowers are, what with all the dandelions and lesser celandine and marsh marigolds. I’m not sure this is 100% true, but it might be because yellow flowers are very visible to flies, who don’t have colour vision but who can tell light from dark. Flies are generally out and about earlier than most bees, and as I’ve mentioned before are important but underrated pollinators, especially of early flowers.

Marsh Marigolds by the wet woodland

And the corrugated leaves of the hornbeam are just emerging. Coldfall is a hornbeam and oak wood –  the hornbeam would have been cut back pretty much to the ground every year, with the twigs being used for kindling or charcoal. The oaks would have been left for up to a century and then harvested. It always moves me to think of people  planting these trees that they would never see fully grown, but then that’s what legacy is about – paying things forward for a future that we won’t see. And every spring brings a feeling of hope, of possibility. A walk in the woods always cheers me up.

Hornbeam leaves emerging

tEntering Canons Park

Dear Readers, when you left us yesterday I’d just been walking through the redwood and cedar trees on Canons Drive. Opposite North London Collegiate School there’s a most inviting path into the woods and, as the sun was shining (for once), off we went. Now what impressed me most is the understorey here. Just look at this sea of lesser celandine!

Not to mention the wild garlic – a couple walking ahead of us pulled up a handful, but there is certainly lots to go round.

And a few bluebells are just raising their little heads – judging by the colour, the drooping stems and the curled-back petals I’d say that, miraculously for an urban setting, these could actually be English bluebells rather than hybrid ones. Correct me if I’m wrong, lovely people! At the very least, these don’t look particularly ‘hybridish’ if there’s any such word.

What I want to know is, what is going on here that isn’t happening in other North London Woods? Is it just that people are sticking to the paths, or that it just isn’t as well used as my local woods? Bluebell Wood in Bounds Green doesn’t have a single English bluebell (as far as I’m aware) and my beloved Coldfall Wood has practically no understorey at all. Here’s a photo from today. The green that you can see is growing along the stream. It isn’t just to do with dense leaf cover either, as neither Canons Park nor Coldfall Wood are in full leaf yet.

Coldfall Wood

Anyhow, back to Canons Park. The Cow Parsley is coming into flower too.

And soon we leave the wood and see another church in the distance. I do like a walk with a bit of symmetry, and after exploring St Margaret of Antioch church yesterday, we come to St Lawrence Whitchurch today.

St Lawrence Whitchurch

The stone tower dates back to 1360 but the rest of the church is apparently in the Continental Baroque style (18th century), which is unusual in England. Alas, the church was closed so we couldn’t have a look. It contains the Chandos Mausoleum – the Duke of Chandos was responsible for the original estate that Canons Drive and the wood were part of, and he also ‘messed around’ with the original medieval church building. The Mausoleum was designed by Grinling Gibbons, though the architectural writer Pevsner is a bit sneery about it and thinks that it was probably knocked up by his workshop rather than the man himself. It shows the Duke as a Roman citizen, with two of his wives kneeling beside him (he was married three times in all, so I guess the third one survived him)

The Chandos Memorial (Photo by By Doyle of London – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=140541390)

Furthermore, the church is home to an organ that was played by George Frederic Handel himself, who was composer-in-residence from 1717/1718. He composed a setting of the psalms known as the Chandos Anthems while he was there, living with the Duke in his stately home (demolished in 1747). I have a great love for ‘Mr Handel’ – it’s difficult to be sad when listening to all that exuberance! But I had no idea that he’d been composing away in Edgware, and playing the organ in this little church. I must go back to see what I make of the interior – it looks quite something!

And then it’s time for a wander around the graveyard, where a parakeet is stripping the cherry blossom, bless her…

There are some graves here from the 18th century…

And some more recent ones. This one tells of an entire family wiped out in a WWII air raid, with possibly just the son (who was maybe on active duty) surviving.

Such terrible stories, but it is so peaceful here. I can imagine when the roads and houses were open fields and countryside. As with so many churches, they seem to have seen it all.

And the church still has its lychgate. This is where a coffin would have waited, under cover, until the first part of the burial service had been read and it was time for the deceased to be brought into the church.

So, what an interesting walk in Edgware! London never ceases to amaze me, with its infinite variety. And all because of an article about redwood trees! You never know where a trail will lead you next.

St Margaret of Antioch

Dear Readers, you might remember my piece about Sequoias earlier this week, when I mentioned that there was reported to be a row of these majestic trees in Edgware, a few miles away from where I live. So, as it’s Easter weekend, how could I resist an expedition to see what’s going on? Plus, I have never actually been to Edgware, even though it’s so close. So, on Saturday we jumped onto a bus to Golders Green and a Northern Line tube to Edgware to see what gives.Well, there’s certainly a lot of independent shops and cafés about, selling all sorts of different cuisines – Indian, Chinese, Lebanese, Afro-Caribbean, Romanian, and lots of others. But we’d just stuffed our faces in East Finchley, so on we went. First up was the rather intriguing church in the first photo. St Margaret of Antioch is the Church of England parish church for Edgware, and was first mentioned in the 13th century, where it was used by the Knights Hospitaller – this was a military order based in the hospital of St John of Jerusalem. These days, it runs the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, and the Saint John Ambulance Brigade in Jerusalem. The tower dates to the 15th century, but the rest of the building has been rebuilt and renovated several times, most recently in the 19th century.

St Margaret of Antioch was one of the saints that Joan of Arc was said to have conversed with. She was born a pagan, but was reared as a shepherdess by a Christian woman after she was disowned by her father for her conversion. Legend has it that she was devoured by a dragon, but that the cross she was carrying irritated the dragon’s innards so much that she was able to make her escape, though exactly how is not entirely clear. She also did battle with a demon in her cell and won by battering him with a brass hammer. She was clearly a woman after my own heart, but alas she was decapitated in the end. She is the patron saint of pregnant women, servant maids, kidney-sufferers and can be invoked against demonical infestations, should you have any.

Saint Margaret of Antioch, with a dragon (Photo by By Postdlf, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2679945)

On we go, past a rather fine stone war memorial, and some buildings that I originally took to be mock Tudor, and which are actually real Tudor, with some of them dating back to the 16th century. Who knew that Edgware had such a rich architectural heritage? They currently house a range of restaurants and bars (one of which was serving flagons of beer though it was only 10 a.m.)  and a driving school.

Actually it’s not so surprising that Edgware has a long history as it’s situated on Watling Street, a Roman road that linked St Albans and the northern cities to London.

And now, we reach Canons Park, a conservation area with a long history. It was originally part of the lands of the Augustinian Priory of St Bartholemew, who also ran St Bartholemew’s Hospital in London. Later, a magnificent house was built in the estate grounds, which now forms North London Collegiate School. The avenue that led up to the entrance still exists, and was planted in 1910 with a variety of magnificent trees. This was the main reason for the expedition, and as they say in Tripadvisor Restaurant reviews, ‘They didn’t disappoint’.

View along Canon’s Drive

We have a mixture of trees here – lots of Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), one California Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), some Dawn Redwoods and a whole variety of cedars and monkey puzzles and goodness knows what else. I was utterly amazed. For those who would like to be able to tell the difference between the Giant Sequoia and the California Redwood, help is at hand below. First is the cone and leaves of the Giant Sequoia – see how the leaves are tiny, in long sprays. The trees themselves also have a more conical, heavily leafed shape than the California Redwoods.

Giant Sequoia leaves and cone.

Cones and leaves of California Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) Photo from https://www.picturethisai.com/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens.html)

Giant Sequoia

Cedar (not sure what type, possible Deodar)

Giant sequoia

Nearly all of the trees have tree preservation orders (TPOs), but this hasn’t stopped some insurance companies from asking for them to be cut down – I recently signed a petition stating that three of the trees had been blamed for subsidence and were threatened with destruction. I’m pleased to report that two of the trees have now been saved, but the petition is still stating that one tree is under threat (though I do note that the petition is more than two years old, so maybe this is old news). Anyhow, it just shows that even with trees as impressive as these, it still pays to be vigilant.

And let’s not forget a) that these trees are relatively just babies (redwoods can live to 3000 years old), and b) are nothing like at their full height yet – the tallest is a mere 110 feet tall, when they can grow to 380 feet. Plus they were planted before there were any houses here at all. Honestly, councils and insurance companies have to sort this stuff out. Too many trees are cut down purely for financial reasons.

Can anyone else see a face in the trunk below? It definitely looks like an Ent to me….

All too soon, we’re at the end of Canons Drive, peering through the fence into North London Collegiate and wondering what to do next. But lo, what is this?

A leafy path through a little wood on a sunny day? Looks good to me! Let’s see how we get on tomorrow.

Dad, fresh from helping to pilot a boat from Weymouth to Portland.

Dear Readers, four years ago today (31st March 2020) my father passed away, and I became a middle-aged orphan. Today, I think about how I used to phone my parents every Sunday, and how I sometimes thought of it as a chore – Dad would speak to me for about five minutes, but he never really knew what to say. Then he’d pass the phone onto Mum. If talking had been an Olympic sport she would definitely have got a gold medal, so I was rarely on for less than an hour. Mum had to tell every story verbatim, in real time – it was as if every detail was of equal value, every exchange, even the most humdrum, worthy of attention and retelling. Only later did I understand how diminished her life had become, how small her world, so that every incident grew to have an almost Homeric importance, though if a wooden horse had ever turned up in Milborne St Andrew I imagine that we’d still be on the phone now.

Yet, after they passed away, the time when I would have phoned them gave me a physical pain, every week for months and months. For a while I would ring their number, just to hear Mum’s telephone voice announcing that ‘Neither Sybil or Tom are able to take your call at the moment’. How I yearned to have one of those long, meandering, infuriating calls again. I would have loved to hear a verbatim report of Mum’s argument with the milkman, or to have a blow-by-blow account of the adorable thing that the cat did. I suppose that it’s often not the big things that we miss so much when someone dies, but the day-to-day familiarity of a voice, or a touch, a turn of phrase that no one else has.

Dad, on the other hand, was a very taciturn person. He was, however, easily exasperated by inefficiency and lack of planning, even after he moved into the nursing home because of his dementia. When I went to visit, Dad would often throw up his hands as he recalled some mishap or source of confusion.

“It was chaos, utter chaos!” he’d say, with a roll of the eyes. Sometimes, if the nursing staff were within hearing range, he’d lean in and say, sotto voce

“And that one” (jerk of the head), “he’s the worst”.

I’d turn to see some poor gentleman trying to manoeuvre his walker through a space that was clearly too small, or someone carrying a plate full of cake at a precipitous angle.

Dad was quick to judge other people as idiots, but he was easily conned or bullied, even before his dementia. However,  Mum took over the phone calls as Dad’s faculties diminished, and she was more than able for any scammers. One ill-advised chap was trying to persuade Dad to give him his credit card details when Mum snatched the phone and gave the scamster such an earful that he told her she was ‘a very wicked woman’ and put the phone down on her. Clearly her way with words was not always a disadvantage.

And so, as the years go by, I find myself thinking less and less about the last few years and the challenges that they brought, and more about what special people Mum and Dad were, and what a good team they made. They always presented a united front in public, and both of them hated it when they were with couples who were contemptuous of one another, or who spoke to one another with a lack of respect. Of course, things could be different in private – my brother and I used to call them ‘Stadler and Waldorf’ after the couple of old men in The Muppets – but basically they had one another’s backs, and were on the same team, for the best part of sixty-five years.

I once asked Mum what the secret of a life-long relationship was.

“Luck”, she said.

I was surprised. I’d expected ‘unconditional love’ or some such notion.

“When you’ve known one another since you were fourteen years old,” she said, “You’re bound to change over the years. The question is, do you change in ways that your partner can deal with? Can you still love one another? We were lucky, because we did, and we grew old together. But sometimes people can’t, and in that case it’s best that they find someone that they can love, rather than spending the rest of their lives miserable”.

I have no idea what happens after we die. Part of me would love to think of Mum and Dad still being together in some way, their essence mingling like smoke. But what I do know is that they were so much part of one another that Dad was always looking for Mum, in some way or another, until his dying day, even though he didn’t really understand that she had died. And now his searching is over, and if nothing else, he has some peace, even though I miss both my parents more than I can say. My heart is heavy today, but I am full of memories, and of gratitude for what they gave me, and who they were.

Mum and Dad in 2016

Dear Readers, in previous years I’ve put together a collection of autumn poems, but in a strange oversight I’ve managed to forget all about spring. No more! Here are a few of my favourites, do feel free to let me know which ones you like.

First up, William Wordsworth, in a pensive mood. He’s not wrong, though.

Lines Written in Early Spring
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

And I rather love this one….

“Feuerzauber”
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

I never knew the earth had so much gold—
The fields run over with it, and this hill
Hoary and old,
Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.

Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good
This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God!
This fringe of wood,
Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.

You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see
Your face grow mystical, as on that night
You turned to me,
And all the trembling world—and you—were white.

Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;
The fields absorb you, color you entire . . .
And you become
A goddess standing in a world of fire!

I confess to a great fondness for Billy Collins. Some people complain that he’s ‘too accessible’ or ‘too sentimental’ but sometimes he just nails it. See what you think.

Today
BY BILLY COLLINS

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

And if that was too sentimental for you, can I recommend Edna St Vincent Millay? The last few lines have me chortling every single time. She rather reminds me of ‘Johnny Nice Painter’ from ‘The Fast Show’. If you haven’t met him before, have a look here.

Spring
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

And here’s a little gem by Thomas Nashe (1593 – 1607), He was a prolific writer of prose and poetry but is best known for this one, and for ‘In the Time of Plague‘, and  two poems could not be more different in tone. Let’s stick to this one for now. It’s so full of joy!

Spring, the sweet spring
BY THOMAS NASHE

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet spring!

Incidentally, the four birds singing are the cuckoo, the nightingale (jug-jug which seems a little prosaic), pu-we (the peewit) and the tawny owl (to witta-woo). How happy I would be to hear them all in one place!

Common Cuckoo – Photo by Mike McKenzie, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

And finally, with no apologies, here is the poem that I chose when we interred my Mum under the cherry tree in the graveyard of St Andrew’s Church in Milborne St Andrew. I loved it then, and I love it now.

The Trees (1974)

PHILIP LARKIN

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.