the arrival of winter



oil on linen board 20 x 20 cm.

After days of such high winds our trees have almost been stripped bare of all of their lovely colourful leaves. Autumn fled away so fast, the joy of bright low sunshine that made everything alive and glowing has faded to a soft kind of light.  A light that is slow to appear in the morning, and keen to rest in the late afternoon.

I am sharing a favourite poem of mine, it is about the futility of war. I need say no more.

Futility by Wilfred Owen one of the poets of the first world war. 

Move him into the sun
gently its touch awoke him once,
at home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides,
Full nerved still warm too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
to break earth's sleep at all?