I glimpsed a child

                                                                                    Gold Finches
 

Dear Reader,

We put the bird feeder back in the garden last week and the  gold finches came aplenty.  We have a little tray for seeds underneath the feeder and the birds love getting into it and swinging.  The squirrel came to see if he could climb up the pole but we foxed him.  Francis made a hole in an plastic tub which he put upside down on the pole so the squirrel could only climb so far and then he had to turn back.  He was furious and whisked his tail about before leaving in a huff.

 

Apparently the weather this week in Britain has recorded its lowest temperature of the 21st century and in Braemar, in the Highlands, the temperature was the chilliest it has been for 25 years.  But spare a thought for the poor souls of the late 16th and early 17th century.  Documents unearthed by a team of researchers from Bristol University have given insight into the hardships people faced then: namely famine, starvation and mass unrest.  In 1603, according to one report, "this year upon the fourth of October was the greatest snow that ever was known by the memory of man".

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From D.H. Lawrence in Cornwall, 1916

'Here the winds are so black and terrible.  They rush with such force that the house shudders, though the old walls are very solid and thick.  Only occasionally the gulls rise very slowly into the air.  And all the while the wind rushes and thuds and booms, and all the while the sea is hoarse and heavy.  It is strange, one forgets the rest of life.  It shuts one in within its massive violent world.Sometimes a wave bursts with a great explosion against one of the outlying rocks, and there is a tremendous ghost standing high on the sea, a great tall whiteness.'

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I glimpsed a child

on the kitchen chair
feet dangling
legs swinging

large brown eyes stared
from a dusty pale face

she didn't smile or speak

about seven years old I thought
Syrian or Iraqi
her clothes once pink and green
now mud-stained and torn

her silver bracelets sparkling
in the sunlight

I made her Moroccan mint tea
offered her cake
kissed her cold cheek
dried her tears

I fetched more sugar
but on return I saw
the chair was empty
the child gone
dissolved in the morning air

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With very best wishes, Patricia