January Weather

                                                                                          Church Mice

 

Dear Reader,

For Christmas I was given by my daughter Jessica the most wonderful book.  It is called 'Where Poppies Blow" by John Lewis-Stempel, and it is a story of the first WW, telling of the love for the horses, donkeys and mules that was felt by the soldiers who cared for them, and for the many birds they watched and listened to.  And how much pleasure this gave to the stressed and frightened men living in such terrible circumstances.  It also describes the ghastly large rats that were everywhere eating anything they could find including dead animals and men.

But mainly it is stories of men loving their horses and if their beloved mount was shot and fell how they would stay with it, stroking it and talking gently to it as it died. An Italian artist, Fortunino Matania was commissioned to paint a mortally wounded horse and the painting,  'Goodbye, Old Man'  became one of the enduring images of the Great War.

 

                                                                                       *

 

From Major-General Jack Seely, Canadian Cavalry Brigade

'But one of the finest things about the English soldier of the front line was his invariable kindness and, indeed, his gentleness at all times to the horses.   I hardly ever saw a man strike a horse in anger during all the four years of war and again and again I have see a man risk his life, and indeed, lose it, for the sake of this horse.'

 

 A poem written by William Parr, Canadian Field Artillery

And when the grand, great, final roll call comes,
To be the first upon parade we'll try,
Oh Lord of All please grant my only prayer,
To take my horses with me when I die.

                                                                                          *

January Weather

We know from recorded history,
that in St.Merryn
a hundred years ago,
there blew great winds
and the sea was smoking white.

We know it was warm in Kent,
where the thrushes thought spring
had come, and piped away.
The primroses were a yellow carpet
in North Norfolk,
or so the parson wrote.

We know of cutting winds in Hampshire,
of icicles and frost, and
in Skiddaw on a mild day,
a brown spotted butterfly was seen.
We know that hungry church
mice ate bible markers,
hungry people died of cold.

And we know that this dark winter month
had days of snow, that wild clouds
gathered in the sky unleashing icy rain,
churning up the plough.

And yet again, we also know
the sun shone in that distant year,
it was warm enough to push through
early snowdrops, the Holy Thorn.
Light was glimpsed, here and there,
all life struggled for its moments.

                                                                            *

With very best wishes, Patricia