Snowdropping

 Drip, drop

warmth of Spain in your pale cream

Milk white warm 

And sadness for the year that's been

But like a mother's breast

Full of life giving

For the year to come

Miniature brothers

Miniature sisters go

walking through the forest

Praising the cool silent winter Earth

Healing flower footsteps

Bloom in their path

Praising the life of this good Earth

What purity you can read

In their books of green leaves

Standing up like flutes or reeds

But heads bowed down

In prayer, humility

Or perhaps

Just loving the Earth

As it smiles on them

In it's darkest months

Growing them in its womb

Like eggs, their bulbs will

burst forth in birth

Growing strong with Mother Earth's milk

Snow white babies crying out in joy

Snow white children running through the woods

In their snowshoes girl and boy

Telling all the fairy tales of childhood

The garden and the sea

 James Allen he lived down in Bowlish

And he planted near Darshill docks

Where the water flows down, from Shepton Town

And into the sewery locks

And he collected these Ukrainian snow drops

Beautiful flowers like pale faces at bus stops

These Caucuses brides who were carried on the tide

Of the Crimean War over fields of crops

Which soldier with his face buried in the mud

Looked up to see their beautiful faces

While cannon balls fell all around

Red blood pooled in all of the places

What hope was there in their black despair

To see these white flowers just growing there

Up from the soil, the good earth of their toil

Like a spring of hope in the valley of death's lair

And so back they came as bulbs in pockets

Who knows what horrors their porters had seen

Back to shine brightly like light bulbs in sockets

Though not yet invented the electrical gleam

And growing them hardy and growing them strong

James Allen adapted them and brought them along

In his greenhouse, his shed, his garden wall's shade

Damp like the valleys of the Crimean parade

And with powder white hands from the flour mill

Dust on his jacket, green fingers of skill

He picked and he reasoned, discerned and he judged

Used tricks of the season, through forest paths trudged

And he cared and he reared them in the English style

To be well adapted to winters in these British isles

Until these Ukrainian flowers learnt to love these lands

Brought here by soldiers, tended by gardener's loving hands

So look around you in February when the snowdrops bloom

And think of their journey from the hands of doom

And hold a light brightly, like their fair heads shine white

And look into the future with hope and fine fight

Snow Drops

 Like a lyric licks

The barley splits

The corn in fits and starts

Skits and parts chaff on the wind

Winnowing billowing gusts

And blasts that fast the breaking 

lines and rows and straps tied down

Over bales

And needles caught in Haystacks

Softly fall the snows on maps

Of our hearts and backs

And elbows tummies where

Tumble weed blows

And youth is but a refraction through

The glass of a crystal

Shatters snow flake

That breaks

But is still whole

In and of itself 

Contains itself

Again and again

Like a hologram

from the past

We ourselves change like snowflakes

Melting after a thaw

Our identity a fluid concept

That runs in and out of open doors

We are water based life forms

Beings of the vapours

And as the shore moves the pebbles

Through the tide

So we move heaven and earth

We tried

But temperatures froze us

impassable blockages dammed us in

And we could not flow

And still we waited cold and deep

Until across our surface

The ice did creep

And skaters came to play and score us with 

The lines of age

But nothing lasts that doesn't change

Upon time's stage

And in spring we thawed and our frozen expansion

Had cracked the walls of the pond

Until once again we spilled out

down new rivers and streams

And rills, rivulets culverts

and dives

And dipped into the caves

Where the bat thrives

And stalagmites and stalactites

Give us standing ovations and built statues 

Of our mineral foundations

And we deposit the past's baggage in river beds

And silt lakes

and we flow on more clearly forgetting

Not regretting our mistakes

Clear minded to the sea

Of all calm consolation

To join the mass hoards of starlit conversation

With sea birds and crustaceans

And bubbles where we glitter

And sparkle in deviations from

The winter bitter

And warm in gulf streams

And volcanic underground conurbations

A jet of steam is found 

To pass us through evaporation

Into the endless swirling ether of our imaginations

Where we write our names upon clouds

With all illuminations

Until the sun's head like lion proud

Roars in love and indignation

That he cannot see the crowds

Who to him offer their libations

And we scatter down

In snow flake crystallizations

Of the word for first softly fell then loud

But all in syncopation

On the hillside forest where the snow drops

Are praying

To welcome in the new spring

In pure white jubilation  

This too will pass

This too will pass

The rose that climbs upon the wall

The primrose blossom all

The Snowdrops and the Hawthorn’s flower

As in the wee small hour

This too will pass

The road that’s cracked and torn asunder

The memories of regret or blunder

And time as light that trips in power

Flickers brief as candlesticks in the midnight hour

This too will pass

The Spring whose surprises do unfold

The stranger waits on a platform cold

The meeting of two friends by chance

Or the sharing of a final dance

This too will pass

All the songs of love and man

All the law broken, held or still in plan

Every thought, or deed or act

Each right or wrong, promise or contract

This too will pass

And so you say you love the season

Spring’s festoon April’s foolish reason

You say the day you prefer to night

What’s bright and gay over what’s out of sight

This too will pass

Be not surprised that all is folly

That the wheel turn’s rain requires your brolly

Nor that woman and man curse and hurt

In Tavern’s the same doomed play rehearsed

This too will pass

I see the writing on the wall

The blood that’s in the mouth of a fool

An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth

What lies are told through Vanity

Or in Humility what Truth

 This too will pass

The Starlings murmur in the sky

The Cloth is starched, cast is the dye

The Spindle turns driven by the wheel

Desire burns but its just the way we feel

This too will pass

I have no possessions, though once I had Gold

Like a King, I would buy a thing; even a soul could be sold

Wisdom is worth more than any belonging

Sadness makes the heart larger, than for any true or false longing

This too will pass