Shopkeeper
What a quiet time of year
he told me,
for it was February
and the trees
were bare.
Storms had
blown even beech leaves
from hedges
not a week before
and trees were
down at the forest eaves.
What he meant
by quiet was a lack
of visitors
coming and going on the forest road,
stopping to
buy in his shop full of tack.
He said it
with his foot just inches
from patches of
snowdrops blooming between daffodil shoots
and yards from
the bird-table flurry of tits and finches.
In the
distance the mountains glittered with snow.
His van was in
neutral, its engine revving
with gathering
speed. I watched him go.
I thought yes, how quiet it seems.
The sun
glistened a dew-wet web in the hedge
and hushed the
cold rush of the roaring streams.
Greg Hill
from
Poetry