A new year’s day
hokku
Spring Equinox 2023
Delicate white blossoms Cluster around dark needles - Blackthorn in flower.
It’s the Spring Equinox, when day and night are of equal length. A celebration of balance, of light and dark, inner and outer, of female and male.
I’ve written about the flowering stems of Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). Hidden by the small, dainty white flowers are sharp needle-like thorns on dark branches: light and dark, beauty and armour. This small native tree has far-reaching roots which produce many suckers creating impenetrable wide thickets, a natural guardian tree from which we learn to respect boundaries.
I give thanks to Mother Earth: in my hands, my heart, and my mind, are all the elements of the Universe.
Ashley
August
The beginning of a new month and the festival of Lammas; a time of harvest.
Bees hurry Between the flowers; Autumn.
July
It’s almost the middle of July and the night skies are light until late. However, if you want to look beyond our solar system, the James Webb Space Telescope has produced amazing pictures of deepest space.
Closer to home, on the 13th July here in the UK, we may see something amazing in the early evening!
Mid July; For those who lift their eyes from the earth, A supermoon.
Ashley
Original artwork and verse by Ashley
Summer Solstice
Here we are, On the hill of summer; The longest day.
This is a verse I published last year and it so I happened that I was in the same place yesterday where my verse came to me! I hope you don’t mind me repeating it? When I first wrote it, I’d been browsing through one of my favourite books, The Hill of Summer by J.A. Baker. I just love the descriptive writing in that book. Baker is probably better known for his extraordinary book, The Peregrine.
(The title of J.A. Baker’s book, The Hill of Summer, comes from a line in A.E. Housman’s poem A Shropshire Lad.)
A Sunny Day
Overcast, But the sun still shines, In a field of buttercups. Ashley
A Different View 