Wind winds through cracks and crannies, picking at
the insulation around the frames of window and door,
poking frigid fingers into spine and soup, chilling hot
food with a frozen flap of the hand. Wind whines in
the chimney, rattling doors to get in, riffling the pages
of an open book, rustling like dead leaves or flame-
crackle in the stove. Wind wins the battle with defences,
teasing the cracked plaster apart to whisper with thin lips,
This is the way of spring, the bright promises made, the
singing and the shooting, the sharp cut and thrust of birth.
Lovely, and the use of alliteration is really effective.
Thanks, Shaun. I’m pleased you like it. I think alliteration pulls words along in a chain, like the wind trailing cold air in its wake 🙂
It’s one of my favorite devices, although oddly that means that I’ve been consciously avoiding it as of late. I found myself leaning on it too heavily. When done well, as in your poem, it really works wonders though.
Funny you should mention that. It’s a device I try to use very sparingly. When the alliteration jumps out at you, as it does if a word has been stuck in simply because it begins with the same sound regardless of what it means, it looks just a teensy weensy bit illiterate. I’m pleased you think it works here though 🙂
“the sharp cut and thrust of birth.”- love this analogy.
In pain lies the seeds of joy.
“If it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working” was one of husband’s favourite expressions when he was forcing medicine down many a reluctant child’s throat.
😀😀
Promises?What promises? It’s Ice Age here.
If you mention spring one more time, I’ll scream, and that’s a promise.
In space, no one can hear you…
I’m sure of it.
Spring wind is cold, perhaps to remind us that though birth is promised, birthing is hard. A fable you have given us.
I don’t know if the March lion is going to appear to start the month, it’s been such an odd winter. Maybe we’ll have only lambs, playful and truculent.
Spring is a hard time of year and we don’t realise it if spring means only going to the garden centre and buying bedding plants. The birds feel it because there’s still not much to eat but the competition is active, all the animals that were in winter torpor are out and about, and we humans stop topping up the feeder. It’s interesting that this is the time of year, from now until the beginning of summer when most people died of famine—nothing left of the winter stores and no harvest in sight. We ought to remember these things.
A robust spring invading a winter space.
Thanks! It’s certainly been robust so far.
We’ve been having our end of summer storms. Not that summer will actually end until May, it just keeps going.
There are spring storms, summer storms, end of summer storms, autumn storms and winter storms. The weather has turned angry on us. Who can blame it?
Yes, we’re noticing a shift. Indeed, we cannot blame.
😦
An ill-wind
There seem to be no end of them.
Yes. We were talking here about the ides of March
I’d forgotten about them. They’ve come around again already? Must be careful around the forum…
Indeed.