These two poems were written some thirteen years apart. One Christmas day I walked around the garden with my father. He said "soon be snowdrop time again". Those words stayed in my head and the same day I wrote them into a poem. I was eighteen. The following year I left my parents and home for the greatest adventure, independence.
The later poem, which was originally the only one intended for this page, was written early in 2004, around the theme of 'beginnings'. When I started adding it to this page, memories came back of those other snowdrops and that Christmas at the very end of childhood. How can possibly I seperate emotion from creativity, the two walk hand in hand.
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Beginnings
Cold, dank, freeze-dried earth,
beaten to iron-armour by winter,
made impenetrable.
I open my door,
chilled fingers frozen to keys.
As I fumble and fail with the lock,
keys fall.
I stoop to retrieve them.
They have landed on the one point of all life.
Two small, green spears
gently shielding a bud of snow-white.
Today it is a beginning.
Tomorrow it will be spring.
© Berenice Dunford 2004.
Snowdrop Time
Soon be snowdrop time
said the father to his child.
Time to begin the climb
up the long year.
But Father, my dear,
something I have to say.
When the passage of the year
has gone on its way,
I may not be here.
I'll leave you one day.
Still the snowdrops will bloom
and nod without you...
The father looks. She has gone,
her whisper in his ear.
May the world surely spin
and the sun ever shine.
Can I always come in
and this home be mine.
And the snowdrops wilt
until autumn rains run
and the winter snows melt.
Soon be snowdrop time again.
© Berenice Dunford 1989.
Dedicated to my father - Rob - who once said those words "Soon be snowdrop time again".
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