Sutton Park, and ‘Each Year I Forget’
BEFORE YOU READ ABOUTSutton Park, and ‘Each Year I Forget’,
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Anyone who’s visited this site over the last few weeks will have noticed that I’ve not been posting much since I started my Book Cover Design Challenge, not even a ‘Poem of the Week’ - I’ve been too busy responding to everyone who’s entered. I’ve been delighted by the amount of thinking time that people have given to the task of guessing which of the seven covers is my favourite, and/or telling me which they’ve liked best, and why.
I love this clear and sunny frosty weather – it’s one of the things I like about winter in England. I’m not so keen on dank and foggy days, though they can also have charm of their own, especially in the countryside.
In spite of living on the edge of the second largest conurbation in the UK, I don’t think of myself as a ‘townie’, and I’m lucky to have the second largest enclosed park in Europe on my doorstep, where I can roam at will through ancient woods and open heath lands.
These days, large areas of the countryside might look beautiful, but are often inaccessible to walkers. I often think kindly of Henry VIII who apparently gave this land to the people of Sutton Coldfield in perpetuity. (At least, that’s what I’ve been told, but I’ve just come across an excellent website that gives lots more detail of the history and geography of the park, together with pictures of its seven pools.)
This afternoon I went out with my camera, as I wanted to get a picture to illustrate the poem I’ve selected for December. Being a fine day and part of the holiday season, there were more people around than usual, but fortunately, most of them kept to the tarmac (car-free) roads, while I crunched across the frosty beech leaves on the narrow tracks through the woods.
Each Year I Forget
Each year I forget
the shape of twigs and branches
under froth of summer leaves.
October flaunts nostalgia
in scarlet woods
binding with spells of
yellow and orange light.
Don’t go, don’t go.
Each year December
surprises me again
as trunks of beeches
glow with their own green
and twigs crack open sky.
I wrote this several years ago – as you might have guessed, I love each of the four seasons as they come around, and although I’ve experienced several decades of them, I’m always surprised to find that I’d forgotten so much about the details of the pleasures they bring.
