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.

 

 (from  :  Poetry Wales Vol 31 no.3)