Four Seasons

Spring beginning, winter ending, fat buds swelling
A new cycle of growth and rebirth, new beginnings.
Springtime sunshine, porcelain pink and white blossom.
Bullfinches and chaffinches furiously feeding, pecking and picking at buds.
Primroses, snowdrops, bluebells, buttercups, dandelions, daisies
Bees pollinating, petals falling, young fruit setting,
Pears, apples and plums, a promise of things to come.
Summer brings the June drop, rain to swell,
Sunshine to sweeten the fruit on the bough.
Sweet scent of flower-filled meadows.
Golden autumn brings fruit for jams and pies,
Aunt Margaret won prizes for her apple jelly,
Delicate pink, perfumed and sweet to taste,
From crabapples collected from a Dorset common.
Victoria plums dark and swollen, pregnant with ripeness
Wasps, now, tired and irritable,
Year’s work done, ready to sting,
Half-drunk and heady with the taste and sweet smell of juiciness
Dusk brings hungry hedgehogs, fattening ready for coming lean times,
Happily hunting, munching and crunching the slugs, gorging on fallen fruit.
Late autumn brings misty, moisty mornings and dew-damp grass to tread,
Coxes orange pippens, crisp, white, sweet and refreshing,
Chestnuts in prickly cases, to score and grill,
Burnt fingers, stripping charred shell,
Hot, sweet nuts, our bellies to fill.
Then winter bringing chill winds, silver sunsets, dark days, long nights,
Huddled inside ourselves, through windows we spy a happy sight,
Visiting fieldfares and redwings feasting on unclaimed windfalls,
Where our own thrushes and blackbirds were before and will be once more.
An odd bright morning lifting hearts and sending spirits soaring,
Reminding us of what is hiding ‘round winter’s dark corners,
A welcome ray of sunshine – a glimmer of hope for the future.
Winter a time of dark, dismal days, a time of reflection,
Promises made to ourselves, to alter our ways.
Winter a time for rest and rejuvenation
Trees settle and sleep, deeply sweetly
Replenishing their energies in readiness for spring.