Reservoir Blog June 2015 edition

Welcome Winter! June 1st marked the start of Winter, and McGregor was hit by a deluge for two and a half days. Here at The Reservoir we are still drying out! But the fireplace is going-in our new snug- and the Donkey Sanctuary Book Fair has assured me of a great stock of books to enjoy. Life is good!

Preparations for the third festival are well on the way and there is an exciting and stimulating array of talent arriving at the end of August. Happy days ahead.

With all the hassle and trauma in the world, it is good sometimes to just relax and enjoy life. Poetry is one way of doing so. There is, despite all the sadness around us, much to be happy about. I try to focus and all that is positive. Not always easy, but there is joy for us all. 

Today’s poem is one of my all-time favourites. Enjoy!

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.


Ted Hughes