Nothing Gold Can Stay

Another walk in the crisp winter snow with a friend today.
It started as an arrangement to have lunch, which we did. We then decided to go for a walk. Oh, how it lifted my spirits. Bullfinches in the bushes, good chat, laughter, crunching footsteps, a Sparrowhawk swooping past at shoulder height...
The sun lighting up the remaining leaves on the little bush was a moment of sheer serendipity. A moment of beauty, then it was gone.
One of my favourite poems sprang immediately to mind as we watched the moment pass.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~ Robert Frost ~