Springing thoughts

Two days after the last snow left

I saw the tiny hint of life

in colour, purple, on the mud

which rain had flooded winter-long,

and thought of Spring.

Encouraged by the silent sun

the lack of wind, the sudden song

- a blackbird sitting on a pole -

in air so silent I could hear

the rush of wings above my head 

as pigeons - should I call them doves?

 - set off briskly over roofs 

and gardens, sodden mossy lawns

and foodless shrubs where dunnocks live

I stopped, for long enough to feel.

But what I felt was not the joy

that children feel when freedom calls

but rather that nostalgic pain

more keen with every passing year

that tells me each Spring takes us up

the path towards that distant peak

where only faith says flowers will bloom.

C.M.M 02/18

Keeping mum

After all these remarks about old boots, I thought I'd show one of the perks of old bootdom (old boothood?) with a pic of these rather gorgeous flowers which came at lunchtime for Moi, materfamilias, Magna Mater (trying to become less magna but failing - especially as the flowers were accompanied by fabby chocolates). There was also a card positively exhorting me to eat chocolate; my offspring clearly don't give a fig for my increasing dimensions.

In connection with the above, I did a foolish thing last week and succumbed to a half-price offer from Amazon of ...Weight Watcher scales. Happily, in view of the chocolate, they are a contraption of such baffling complexity that to use them, as recommended, first thing in the morning is out of the question. For a start, you have to program in your user number and code (this presumably to stop Mr B finding out my grim secrets), then push the scale gently in the centre, then leap on before it changes its mind and returns you to the clock. And then - wait for it - if your feet are too dry, dear reader, it says triumphantly "error" - or rather "err" - and back you go to the clock again. So you need to have lightly moisturised (or slightly sweaty) feet or the gemme's a bogey. But I'm not about to become fixated on my weight with all that hoo-hah each time, and that's for sure.

And just for Neil: I've uploaded the pic in such a way to allow for text-wrap. See thae purists?