Nightfall on the Winter Fen.

A pleasant day spent with CMI.

I was rereading one of my late daughter's poems. She was quite a wordsmith. I got to thinking whether a photo or a poem could best evoke a particular scene. In the poem below she describes what it can feel like when the night falls on the fen, you are alone and far from humankind, the weather is bleak and you are gripped with an unnatural fear. A great photo could convey some of this but I would go with the poem every time.


Nightfall on the Winter Fen

A violent geometry. The cold sun
Shoots out its last protractor rays of light.
A circular horizon, where perspective
Converges like the cross hairs on the sight.
Geese stream - an echoed spear down flooded furrows.
Before the silent arrow of their flight
The last thread-vein of sky-line beads, and bleeds black
Into the frozen fabric of the night.

Euclid's rules are broken tools inside the void.
Your heartbeat shovels blind. Your senses fail.
Your sudden heavy-breathing reels in like
A frightened field mouse climbing its own tail
A dark which makes an atheist a believer.
You've never prayed so honest or so hard
For some Good God to stumble in the blackness
And forge the moon , and hammer out the stars.