Early Evening

My favourite time of all.

The sun has just set,

sloped down between the hills' dark shoulders;

sky is still luminous with light.

in the no-wind

the trees are still, stopped - 

leaves and branches motionless.

moths and insects flit and

skitter in the dark, 

small blips against the bright/dark sky.

Even-ing out the day, dusk

spreads quiet to lie about the mounds 

of trees and hills, sculpted into dark.

4th November 2010

Alexia

Why it's so good to visit other blogs...

Yesterday I was reminded of an old poem which I love but haven't thought about for years.  Someone had asked, in a comment about another poem, if the blogger knew the origin of a line of poetry, which she quoted.  The blogger didn't, but I did!
Off I went on a search to find the complete text, and here it is:

Twilight

I was driving the cows and the frogs were soothsaying,
‘Woe, land and water! All, all is lost!’
It was winter full grown and my bones were black in me.
The tussocks were brittling from dew into frost.

The earth looked at me, ears up in a stillness.
I was nine at the time and a coward by fate:
The willow-trees humped into cringing old swaggers,
And the cows lunged up unicorns, passing the gate.

A sudden wind clouted the nose of our chimney,
It rumbled and bellowsed its sparks in a spray;
I took to my heels in the terrible twilight,
For I thought that the sky was blowing away.

Eileen Duggan

Such clever, lovely phrases and word conjunctions; "tussocks were brittling from dew into frost" - isn't that fantastic?

So then I went looking for a photo which would transmit the coldness of those words. This is the best I could find, but the words are better:

What a verb talent! Clouted, bellowsed, lunged....  Masterful!