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.