Every mid-February
those first days arrive
when the sun rises
higher than the Black
Hill at last. Brightness
and a crazy breeze
course from the same airt-
This quote from a poem entitled The Dash, from Kathleen Jamie's latest collection The Overhaul reminded me.
I had read Kathleen Jamie's book Sightlines last March. If I was on a desert island Sightlines is one of the books I would want to hand for the way it makes me notice things I never have before, and in there a piece entitled Light also about those February days...
Every year, in the third week of February, there is a day, or, more usually, a run of days, when one can say for sure that the light is back. Some juncture has been reached, and the light spills into the world from a sun suddenly higher in the sky.
It was March and I had missed the day for 2012, but I wrote this on the page...
It has now been confirmed that in 2012 the UK had something like 172 days when more than 1mm of rain fell. We could barely remember a dry day, and Nell and Magnus, now both eight months old, had known no other than wet. Day after day we have traipsed around after muddy paws, Magnus, eighteen years younger and more sprightly than the Dowagers, showing us exactly how high and across what an agile cat can climb. Nell meanwhile acquiring a plimsoll line of mud around her middle and needing a daily hose down before coming back indoors, and our boots likewise hosed off and lined up to dry every day in front of the Aga.
Frankly it has been relentless, and with an energetic puppy to house-train and walk regularly, a very hard winter of work after enjoying those few rare days of summer we had...oh for some dry.
We have been all eyes for those days of Light.
Slowly the evenings draw out and it is possible to walk dogs at 5pm...then 5.30, but still it rained and the sky glowered down on us.
And then suddenly, on February 14th, no sooner wished for than granted..
and we walked to the woods with the sun on our backs and it felt warm... almost hot...
and Magnus spotted it too, eschewing the basket for the sun puddle on his little mat on the kitchen table...
'...and though scalding
to our wintered eyes
look, we cry, it's here.'
I'm sure we still have days of cold and wet to come but have those days arrived your way too...
And if you are in the Southern Hemisphere does something different happen, but still you sense that change...
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