Northern words and winter

 

snow on the Cairngorms, Nov 2024

Northern words and winter

 

extract from Wave Soaring

I feel very honoured that one of my poems has been included in the latest issue of Northwords Now (Winter 2024/25). NNow features "New writing, fresh from Scotland and the wider North (Sgrìobhadh ùr à Alba agus an Àird a Tuath)"

 

(So, yes: it includes work in English, Gaelic and Scots)

 

Copies are free and the printed copies can be found in bookshops, information centres, cafes and all sorts of places across the Highlands and Islands, or you can download a free copy from the website: 

https://www.northwordsnow.co.uk/Issue45

 

The cover image of Issue 45 is "Wave Soaring" by my lovely friend Alice V Taylor whose work can be seen here: 

https://www.instagram.com/alicev.taylor/?hl=en

 

As we are sort of in the cold now, the full text of "Now we are in the cold" follows. It is part of my latest collection, "Waiting for the Snow" and was first published in Issue 4 of Forget-me-Not Press (2022) "In The Dark":

https://forgetmenotpress.net/in-the-dark

 

Waiting for the Snow can be found on ebay or direct from me

 

 

Now We Are In the Cold. 

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are the hunting time,

And the wild geese fly in from the north of the world,

Stitching grey clouds to the hills below

With the long, wavering threads of their flight.

Winter waits,

For the silent, cautious deer,

For the birds to settle in the stubble,

For the hungry fox to take a chance.

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are in the hunting time,

And the stillness breathes

In the softest voice of the wind,

Whispering between the trunks, under the branches,

Among summer’s bones in the echoing wood.

Winter waits,

In the cracked ice,

In the wonder of an oak leaf, 

Frosted sharp on the bare ground

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are in the dark,

And we are hunted by the wildness,

And a bitter wind through the treetops,

And the cold, brittle silence of a snowy night.

And now, winter waits

For the sigh after the storm, 

For the single candle on the window sill

For my heart settling quiet beside a midnight hearth.

more snow on the Cairngorms, Nov 2024