OK, so the short days and the rain got to me and I waxed lyrical… the first downright silly, the second, more serious, I guess… comments, please!

Shortest Day (Silly Solstice Song from the Algarve)

Let’s celebrate the shortest day, where the sun is short and we’re short of rays; we’re looking for the shortest bird with the shortest name, but that’s absurd, we’re short of cash and we’re short of breath and we’re quite clearly in a meth, which you might say if filled your mouth too full with crisps, which is, surely, what you do at Crispmas time, apart from making poems that don’t quite rhyme, but the aim is to make the shortest cake, walk the shortest walk, go the shortest way on the shortest day, because there’s too much to fit in to too few hours when the light’s not bright and you’re short on power. So let’s write the shortest poem and we won’t quite mind if  the words are short and the rhymes don’t fit, so here it is, and I have to quit, because I’m short on time on the shortest day, which gives me something very short to say which I hope won’t make you short with me – Yorkshire in its origins, you see…it’s quite simple: E.

 

Winter Solstice on the Ria Formosa

Breakers lumber in, threaten the sand-spit; 

this side, shrubby flats succumb to silent flow,

heather drowns, moon sponsors encroachment…

Wings of gull, spoonbill, egret widen a grey sky

flock to straight-edge the salt pans, the shy heron too,

once landed, now slow to distance our approach.

We stand and watch an eddy’s corkscrew draw of water

toss sticks disappear down, down, surge out into  another pool

like a passing of winter days into Spring.