I blame Christmas by Sandra Horn

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Well, the run-up to Christmas always scrambles my brain, and this year is no exception! I ALWAYS write my blog on 19th and set the date and time for 3.30 a.m. on 20th, but yesterday, what with realising we hadn’t enough Christmas cards and that I’d forgotten to send gifts to one whole family and ended up scrabbling a next-day-delivery hamper together, I lost track. A thought that I’d forgotten something else niggled at me, but I was in bed and half asleep when I knew what it was. The blog! So here I am in the grey dawn, hoping I can get it in before it’s too late.

Christmas, eh? In my version of Babushka she finds peace, but the reality for me is chaos!  What I’d really like to do is send out a general message to ‘all and sundry, near and far’ (King John’s Christmas, A A Milne) that I’ve gone away to a remote cottage on Bodmin Moor with no phone or internet connection and I don’t want to be found. I’ll be back after Epiphany. What a  Miserable Old Bat! I used to love it…I loved creeping about hanging stockings on bedroom doors even when our offspring were grownups, and decorating the tree and finding presents for everyone. I still enjoy singing carols and making Christmas food and the light trail in Hilliers’ Gardens, but trying to find the right presents for family members I hardly ever see makes me more anxious year by year. How to stop, though?

Right, enough ranting. It isn’t snowing and isn’t going to, according to the forecast. We’re in for a soggy grey Christmas. I wish it could be white – that might help my moany state. I do love snow. Once, in early January, we were in North Norway, right up in the Arctic Circle and on my husband's birthday we were taken for a sleigh ride through snow-covered fields, behind a horse with a jingling bell! This year we were in the North Lakes when we saw the first snow icing the top of Blen Cathra. Magical. One year, we went to the top of the Schilthorn by rail, track-and-pinion rail and a succession of cable cars so that I (who am afraid of heights) could walk on the glacier. I once fell into a deep ditch when the snow was so deep and blindingly white that I couldn’t find the path home. It didn’t put me off! Here are some snow poems:

Tam Snow

 

Who in the bleak wood

Barefoot, ice-fingered,

Runs to and fro?

Tam Snow.

 

Who, soft as a ghost,

Falls on our house to strike

Blow after blow?

Tam Snow.

 

Who with a touch of the hand

Stills the world’s sound

In its flow?

Tam Snow.

 

Who holds to our side,

Though as friend or as foe

We may never know?

Tam Snow.

 

Who hides in the hedge

After thaw, waits for more

Of his kind to show?

Tam Snow.

 

Who is the guest

First we welcome, then

Long to see go?

Tam Snow.

 

 

Charles Causley

 

And my top favourite:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

 

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

 

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

Robert Frost

 

And

How to paint a snow scene

 

Cover your ears against music,

chatter, noises of the town.

Search for an almost-silence,

a feathery soft swish.

 

Empty your mind of sunsets,

scarlet poppies, apricots.

Contemplate  goosedown, tundra,

iced sherbet, moon.

 

Walk without shoes

through frosted grass

until your blanched skin stings.

 

Mix china clay dust from the docks at Par

 with melt-water from Hofsjökull

 

Pick up your brush:

(bleached-bone handle, swansdown tip).

Dip into the white clay slip,

then flick, flick, flick.

 

By me.

 

That’s all, folks! Ignore the rant! Happy Christmas!

 

Comments

Sandra Horn said…
Apologies for the lack of pictures and labels - rushed job.
20 December 2023 at 11:18
Peter Leyland said…
Excellent post Sandra. I only recognised the Robert Frost, a real favourite, and thought the first one was by you, and the last one by someone else. As you can see I’ve made an early start on the Xmas booze. Have a great Xmas
20 December 2023 at 22:10
Cecilia Peartree said…
Lovely poems, and I apologise for only reading this post long after it was published! (I blame Christmas too)
31 December 2023 at 12:04
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