Beginning
(assembling the family tree)
When your mother strung the mittens
above the range, the damp wool smell
mixed with supper waiting for your Pa.
He came home late, banging the door
sending the mittens dancing.
You were six that winter, playing in snow
that froze and froze. Sent sliding
with pennies in your glove to the corner shop,
hoping to get extra 'for the bairns'.
When the snow whipped
her voice and hid it in the ice,
there were only ha'pennies for the shop,
no extra for the bairns, no dancing mittens.
Pa fed the range with your mother's chair.
We journey back eighty years
to the silvery threads on your mother's belly,
back to the crying twins and the red raw hands
that set the offerings upon the table,
and your mittens above the range.
Nicola Walpole
Precocious Persephone
Persephone, it's far too soon for spring.
Earth is bereaved. Give her some time to mourn
the year that died a week or two ago.
Stop daubing colours on the countryside
with such infectious speed and disrespect.
That gaudy orange on the poplar's twigs,
and hedgerow bushes burning red,
viridian shoots of Queen Anne's Lace that itch
their way up through the moist soil unopposed,
it is too soon for them.
Let them alone!
And tell the open catkins to recoil,
to save their pollen for a warmer time.
Send back the wind to true and honest north
with fierce blue skies or monumental clouds.
It should be boreal in January.
Persephone, if you must have the sun,
then let it shine on convalescent fields
of muted browns and greys, not blazing green.
You left the underworld impulsively.
Return there for a while,
while earth revives.
The pure sharp anonymity of snow,
revealing tracks of animals and birds,
Or narrow bodkin-eyes of snowdrop buds
which thread their way through matted meadow grass,
To you, the simple comforts that I draw
from Nature's reticence are alien.
Persephone, am I too hard on you?
For ignorance of winter is no fault
when it is something you can never see
or breathe or hear or touch.
How much you miss!
Diana Hirst