The sun hesitates;
the damp ground is left longing.
This seasonal purgatory is
an advent pause that’s caught
between what was and what’s to come.
A time to hold our breath
and wait in faith and hope.
Walking back from taking a Christmas assembly at school earlier this week, I was struck by how gloomy it was. The day hadn’t quite managed to begin, and probably wouldn’t do so before night set in.
(09.12.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo adapted from Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
This morning’s frost looked beautiful but
it bites my neck and makes my muscles ache.
My fingers have become a fading white.
My breath’s condensing on my nose. It drips.
I brew more cups of tea to warm within
but even this becomes draining,
necessitating even more trips to the bathroom.
I fear to look in the mirror.
Will anything be there? Or is, as I suspect,
the cold in truth a thirsting vampire with
its fangs open in sharp and siphoning anger.
It’s cold…
(01.12.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by David Hellmann on Unsplash
Booted we seek to climb,
assert ourselves, impose
our will. Slieve Donard howls.
Fierce tears define its shape,
sharpen it’s angst and contours.
Woken, it’s rage defies
our rise and pushes back.
Determined, we persist
and brace against the gale.
Our worlds compress until,
heads bowed, each walks alone.
This wild and reckless peak
doesn’t surrender meekly.
Recently I met with flatmates from university days to go walking in Northern Ireland. Our first walk was a climb to the peak of Slieve Donard, the highest point in Northern Ireland. The weather raged as weather should on such a walk. It was truly magnificent!
(30.10.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Zoe Ball speaks and yet the world is dark?
I double check in case the clock deceives.
Alas, it doesn’t. Zombie-like I rise.
The morning’s urgency has drained away,
its greyscale smear a strain upon my soul.
Even our pot plants share this weariness;
their flowers droop, they hang their heads in shame,
and outside in the dark the trees stand bare.
I’m not a morning man. Our alarm clock plays Radio Two to wake us up. It now sounds before the sun rises. This is not a good combination.
(25.10.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Sonja Langford on Unsplash (original in colour)
The early morn.
Two foxes sprinting
fluid and fast.
Coursing the street
their game of tag
washes its banks.
4am. I’m up early to catch a plane, walking to the local train station. In my peripheral vision I spot a red blur. Two foxes with more energy than me fly past.
(06.10.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Wen Zhu on Unsplash
Temperature plummets
and so whimsical winter
makes.poetic.snows
This was actually written way back before ‘Poem 1‘, but using what3words to locate my car and tent at Greenbelt reminded me of it. The gates and signposts in Lea Valley have what3words identifiers on them to help locate them. One not far from us is the magical ‘makes.poetic.snows‘. This was begging to be put in verse (but hopefully not into practice, not too soon anyway…)
(01.09.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Jessica Fadel on Unsplash
The Lea meanders, ambles on her course,
and in her brooding sleep she meditates.
Above, along, aside, reflections rise,
a flock of dreams, take wing and, graceful, flies:
Cormorant, cuckoo, coot, moorhen,
great crested and cousin little grebe.
Black headed gull, common gull, common tern,
reed and sedge warbler, grey wagtail.
Egyptian goose, greylag goose, Canada goose,
grey heron and little egret.
Mallard, wigeon, goldeneye, goosander, gadwall,
silver wood, shoveler, teal and tufted ducks.
Hobby, buzzard, red kite, kestrel,
sparrowhawk, barn owl, little owl.
Great spotted and green woodpeckers,
allusive kingfisher, bashful bittern.
As a child I dreamt of reaching high
until the sunrise pulled me to and moored me.
Detached, released, unlike that earthbound son
her dreamborn flights of fantasy soar freely.
Yesterday I finished reading Robert MacFarlane’s magnificent prose poem Ness. This, and the lists found in other writings of his, inspired this, as of course do our many sightings as we have walked alongside our neighbour, the slumbering Lea. The photo is of an adult cormorant I managed to snap in 2019: a favourite bird, comical, haughty and surprisingly graceful.
(29.06.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Unmanicured, my garden dances,
a field of sunlike dandelions,
swaying to a salsa beat.
No doubt my neighbour thinks it’s wild.
It is. This is nature’s rhythm.
It’s raw, untamed, and improvised. Wild-life.
Inside, I ache. Fettered, I wish
to join them but it’s too late and so,
instead, I watch the sparrows flit
between their stalks in freedom songs.
I’m a lazy gardener, and so need little encouragement to join #NoMowMay, in fact I’ve strayed into #NoMowJune (sadly the alliteration isn’t as good…) It turns out that being lazy is good for our barren garden, now it’s full of life.
(07.06.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
With oriental flare,
the grebe attracts attention.
Her sublime looks and slender
lines are carefully honed.
Exotic, not like other birds,
she owns her stage.
Checking all eyes are on
her, paparazzi ready,
she poses
to applause.
I don’t get to see these so often as other birds, but always appreciate them when I do. So distinct, they demand attention.
(30.03.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Bengt Nyman, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Stood by his office window, the silent
partner waits, serene and straight.
Beneath his greying brows, two keen
and wizened eyes, gaze out.
He waits. And waits. And waits. Until
incisively he strikes; a single
dart with ballet dancer poise.
Replete, he struts away.
So often we almost walk past these ‘old men’ of the river without noticing they’re there. Such graceful birds.
(29.03.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Ode for the Day 