Transitions

A battle: to the south cold and frost. To the north mild. And the north  prevails, even as we walk out in the morning.

Time for some poetry:

        This tiny son of life; this spright,
        By momentary Human sought,
        Plume will his wing in the dappling light,
        Clash timbrel shrill and gay —
        And into time's enormous nought,
        Sweet-fed, will flit away. 

                                                 Walter De La Mare  The Titmouse

Walter De La Mare loved nature.   He was also a highly original writer capable of some extraordinary insights into the human condition. His imagination was most at home in the borderland between fantasy and reality uniquely gifted in describing those transitional areas in human character and the wider natural world; always you feel there's another stranger world close by. He would surely have been fascinated by Schrodinger's cat.

Many of my generation grew up with De La Mare's magical, intriguing and often amusing children's poetry sometimes enchanted sometimes haunted. But he wrote more for adults and what he wrote shows a depth of understanding and compassion rarely seen today. And you feel there's a parallel world not far away. I've recently been discovering one of his novels ** and it's astonishing.

____

Why do so many of us prefer Spring and Autumn before pure blue skies or inflexible wintry conditions? Perhaps it's because these  halfway places are less easily definable and their mystery keeps teasing us. And even in this digital age we still love mystery.

This morning two weather systems were in dispute. The light of early morning reflected this. Nothing clear-cut. So woods and clearings refused to be pigeonholed. They were in-between.

And all the better for that.
 

** At one point the diminutive heroine enthuses about an untended garden where the plants are going wild. “They are just racing along to live as wildly as they possibly can. It's the tameness that would be shocking to me”

**