Last day of the year

and old man’s beard

smothers the hedgerow

like the fresh fall of snow

we haven’t had

 

this winter. No flowers but the

red tips of hips and haws

perched in between

the palest green

lichen creeping along blackthorn.

 

The damp creeps too,

up from the earth

to meet grey sky descending

like a bird’s song across the long

wet end of the year.

 

Heavy the days at this slow time

ponderous the rhyme

of bells which mark the turning

point; the pendulum swing

the ring of something new.

 

Poised as we are, between now

and then, what can we know

but that we are cradled

kept; the ground true

the green shoot poking through.