(Giverny, 11.4.12)

The Adagio of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor

usually helps:

Something about the soar and

the swell almost unbearable

but the falls don't matter because

your heart is one beat ahead of 

gravity.

Don't know what it is about you

that sets the Elgar LP spinning 

on my mental record player

every time we pass -

but I hope it doesn't stop

beautiful

I hope it never stops.

struggling to walk a little
because you've found that
underneath the layers of jumpers
and coats and scarves
winter bones are brittle
and removing those layers is
something of a risky business
because the next gust of wind might
blow it all over
and April showers wash what's left
away.
and yet
there's the old image
of Spring breathing life into things
which you never really believed
but perhaps this year things will be
different
and something may come of it after all.

with my eyes resting on the ever evasive point
somewhere in the middle distance
I could watch it for hours
over and over
the shirt sleeves of your smile
falling over the arms of everything I have left
the delicate balancing act
of what is here now
and what is to come.
I could hold it all in my cupped hands.

A survival-case of sorts. I need to tidy it up a little.

'In the Bleak Midwinter' is my favourite Christmas carol. Not that there is anything so very bleak about this midwinter. Indeed, outside it is almost disconcertingly warm. Never mind. I spent this morning polishing silverware ready for Christmas dinner tomorrow, which I enjoy doing. I like that all you can hear is the clock ticking in the hall and your mother playing 'Once in Royal David's City' in the kitchen next door, and suddenly you find your own face in the back of an old dessert spoon.
Merry Christmas, and I'm sorry for everything.