Day: May 4, 2023

Hailed like a returning hero yet in itself
Spring suffuses shyly. No ballyhoo debut but wave
on showering wave  it leaves the winter shelf
revealing to our naked eyes, as lamplight in a cave

And long before the vert outburst
a movement so discreet, so nearly still
we almost always miss the switch. First
seen when brown departs below the distant hill

for only later does the Spring make haste.
The sauntering child of April starts its run
the winter dead are weighed and laid  to waste
and sole survivors suckle on the sow of sun

The sea runs back against itself
With scarcely time for breaking wave
To cannonade a slatey shelf
And thunder under in a cave.

Before the next can fully burst
The headwind, blowing harder still,
Smooths it to what it was at first –
A slowly rolling water-hill.

Against the breeze the breakers haste,
Against the tide their ridges run
And all the sea’s a dappled waste
Criss-crossing underneath the sun….

^{John Betjeman – extract of “Winter Seascape}“