An exuberance of yellow-

coconut scented, gaudy gorse

         teasing us with the tropics

amidst westerly blasts and downpour

 
celandine creeping commando style

         from the verge to

create a carpet of a meadow

 
the daffy-down-dillies are turning heads

 ancient ladies go giddy

in the blood (and glad of it, too) 

 
the primroses are not entirely

         sedate, sitting prettily as a

complaisant cat, without the calculation.

 
meanwhile self-aggrandising narcissi

         brashly stick out their orange tongues

defying frost, a wildish windiness

 
The very light has gone gold-

the frost in the morning

         relaxes into the sun’s embrace

kissed by an old and skilful lover

 
while all around there is a loosening

          a suffusion of Eros

as the earth widens her thighs

 
 Day and night are equitable-

yet how can the work a day world grasp

this too sweet, too sexy sensuality

 
our hearts become like wellsprings

         we collectively tip our chins

and bask, adapting to the blink of warmth

 
we all roll back on our heels

         turning our cheeks towards joy

balanced between earth and sky

This Week in Corrogue…

 
It’s been unseasonably cold with March growling and howling Siberian gusts in from the east. March brought our first snow of the winter.

 
As one local said of the weather, “All the old signs seem to have gone.” You used to be able to forecast the weather from knowing all those signs. But they do not seem to signify in ways they were once understood.

 
Certainly everything is quite mixed up. Snowdrops that should appear in February for St. Brigid’s Day are flowering still in my neighbour’s garden. The daffodils are out, which is heartening but my crocuses collapsed with the unexpected onslaught of frost.

 
What began to encourage me that March might depart lamb-like was sighting two phenomena. First, the mint, dormant all winter, is re-emerging.  Today, I could have leapt if I hadn’t been tethered to Murphy and Pippin’s lead, when I sighted the first primrose on the Relic Road.

 
What is truly immutably seasonal is the light. Dawn is smudgy at 7:30 am. It is still light at nearly 7:30 when I take the dogs out for the last walk of the day. This is what I love about living here in Ireland. I love the lengthening days to summer solstice when it feels as if we only really have two hours of ‘real’ dark and a desultory twilight up until midnight.

 
The flip side of this is that the winter dark is intense and the hours are long. Too long for many people. I, however, was the child who sunshine made itch and loved the cool shade of the cellar during the long, hot and humid summers of my childhood in north-eastern American. I am sure it rather alarmed my mother, but it seems to be constitutional. I like the cool temperate climate with its dramatic light and dark and equinoctial slant.  The light is so numinous I don’t even mind the rain.

 
 
© 2006 Bee Smith