Black Dog Running
The dog is running through the snow –
just watch him go!
A word of command and he’s gone
into the woods alone.
There his ilk congregate and bark
to thicken the dark.
But here, clear snow and light,
and no black dog in sight
just snow, just snow.
George Szirtes is a Hungarian-born poet, translator and blogger. This is his website
Photograph by Clarissa Upchurch
Walk to the wood
Winter’s early, November stillborn,
the path already breathless
beneath inches of pearl snow.
Grey geese beat upwind bleating curses;
the sun’s weighed down and waxen:
it clings to the horizon.
In the wood a feathered silence falls,
snowflakes drifting down to swell
an already burdened brook.
Turning back I scrape my name in snow;
one look at this sky enough:
nothing here lasts.
Peter Phelps is an environmentalist, entrepreneur and writer who grew up in a family of nine children in outback Australia. He travelled and worked for several years in Russia and Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan. He currently lives with his family in North Norfolk.