Am I becoming used to the countryside?

Not that I was ever averse to being in the countryside but when we fist arrived last November, it came as rather a shock to the system.  The dark was spectacularly dark requiring a torch to negotiate the steps from the bungalow and the journey to the local pub.  Running out of milk meant a 5 mile round trip rather than a brief 10 minute stroll to the local Co-op.  I could no longer hear the neighbours turn on their taps, cough or have jolly conversations in the street just outside the front door - instead I rarely saw anyone, got woken up by owls and battled with a constant stream of insect life that wished to join me in the lounge.  A year on and this has become the way things are, a massive choice of muddy lanes in which to pick blackberries, hills to take in the views and an ever changing sky that seems so wide compared to living in town.  For 2015 I intend to spend more time learning to identify the constellations (other than Orion and the Big Dipper ) since I can now see them and am looking forward to the spring and another lawn full of wild violets.  Still need to keep the torch handy though.







SNOW AND SNOW

by Ted Hughes

Snow is sometimes a she, a soft one.
Her kiss on your cheek, her finger on your sleeve
In early December, on a warm evening,
And you turn to meet her, saying "It''s snowing!"
But it is not. And nobody''s there.
Empty and calm is the air.

Sometimes the snow is a he, a sly one.
Weakly he signs the dry stone with a damp spot.
Waifish he floats and touches the pond and is not.
Treacherous-beggarly he falters, and taps at the window.
A little longer he clings to the grass-blade tip
Getting his grip.

Then how she leans, how furry foxwrap she nestles
The sky with her warm, and the earth with her softness.
How her lit crowding fairylands sink through the space-silence
To build her palace, till it twinkles in starlight—
Too frail for a foot
Or a crumb of soot.

Then how his muffled armies move in all night
And we wake and every road is blockaded
Every hill taken and every farm occupied
And the white glare of his tents is on the ceiling.
And all that dull blue day and on into the gloaming
We have to watch more coming.

Then everything in the rubbish-heaped world
Is a bridesmaid at her miracle.
Dunghills and crumbly dark old barns are bowed in the chapel of her sparkle.
The gruesome boggy cellars of the wood
Are a wedding of lace
Now taking place.