It’s a long time since I shared a Dorset poem with you – it was last October when we went there, and there is still much in my notebook to turn back to.  They fill up with words, these books, like ore, which can be taken up to the light, and sifted, and cast into something to keep, to help another day.  They fill up with things you rediscover, and see afresh.

If you would like to go back to a few other pieces from that time, you can do so here:

Dorset Poems – Scrumping in a Hurricane

and

Dorset Poems – St Gabriel’s Chapel, 1
So, while I am preparing and mullling over some more recent work to share with you – and I will do so – I thought I’d bring you this.  While we’ve been out and about walking this autumn, I remembered hearing these lambs last year, after a day of many miles and many hills, and wondering if I was imagining things.  The wind was whipping about very strangely, and I was in need of tea and cake. Rounding the corner and coming across this farm, it felt like a strange, sheltered place where, rather than things falling into decline, and ending, and growing darker, we were looped back to spring, and hope, and the almost reckless persistence and optimism of life and new beginnings.

It’s very gloomy here today in the UK.  It has grown suddenly cold.  The clocks have gone back, and it’s dark early.  I felt I needed this today, to remind me of the strange tenacity of hope.

Autumn lambs at Upcot Farm

A high thin bleating carries
on the wind
as we draw close to the farm.
It sounds like lambs, I say
It’s October, you reply,
yes, but even so,
even so…..

Twins, newborn, their chords still visible,
blue, elastic bands around each tail,
short, white wool,
ears like pink shells
full of light
with the sun behind.
Soft, new, wide-eyed,
wide-mouthed.

And another mother,
and lamb
and another
and a hen with a
cluster about her
cheeping like spring,
as the gale gusts
and blows sharp leaves
in our faces.

Here, amid the berries
and apples
and bright golden leaves
there is still the sound
of life, there is still
unexpectedly,
wonderfully,
the bleating of new lambs.

 

 

W