"Caw!" by Walter de la Mare

Caw!

Ho, ho, ho, ho!

Now old Winter`s winds do blow!

Driving down his flocks of snow.

All the fields where daisies were

He has frozen bleak and bare;

Every bush and hedge he decks

With a myriad shining flakes.

Waiting for the sun to rise,

They stand up like hills of ice;

Glisten, gleam, and flame and burn

Every dazzling hue in turn.

Now the farmer`s boy he goes,

Scarlet ears and redder nose,

Whistling as he shuffles by

A sea of white, a cloudless sky.

Now the hare peeps out to see

What strange wonder this can be;

And the solemn-headed rook,

Perched above his hooded oak,

Hoarsely caws, and shakes the snow

From his sooty wing; and "Caw!"

Cries again: "what have we here,

Neighbours dear!

The Magician, in one night,

Has changed a world that`s green to white!"

by Walter de la Mare

This old poem of rhyming couplets, remembered from childhood, came into my head today as I trudged through the snowy fields with hay. A single crow perched on the top of a boundary tree and cawed into the still air. Often, a pair of crows will watch as I feed the animals and then will fly down to find any scraps or seeds that are left behind. As this freezing weather stays around for day after day, night after night, I feel as numbed by the cold as the shuffling farmers boy. It is a cold which smacks the face with raw ice and which slows the brain.

Back in the warm house, I watch the garden birds, hungry and braver in their need to survive.

A female blackbird waits in the pear tree, before she flies down for seed and grated apple on the kitchen window sill.

A song thrush fluffs up feathers against the cold.

The robin watches for fallen seed......

....and a blue tit pecks for peanuts as the snow still falls.