I love the arrival of spring. Lighter days, warmer sun, yellow daffodils, buds on trees, all seem to send signs of optimism and they lift my spirits. But I love all the seasons too, in different ways; they give the year a natural structure, perhaps a narrative structure.
There are rhythms in life that shape us as people and writers. The rhythms of a day, a week, a year, a lifetime. Without our knowing it, these rhythms lie behind the decisions we make as writers: decisions about genre, about the sound of a sentence, about the choice and order of words.
This month I set a brief for the Dark Angels group that came to Merton College last April. One year on, across the changing seasons, we’d come back to spring. So the brief I set was to write four sentences, one about each of the seasons, and to try to achieve a sense of circularity. This is my own response:
Opening the curtains,
I hear the blackbird singing,
catch his eye and
together we welcome
spring’s approach.
Approaching the sea,
I smell the summer salt
and search for crabs
in rock pools glinting
in the sun’s rays.
Raising my eyes
while walking through windfalls
nibbled by insects,
I wait to see if another
apple will fall.
Falling into a sofa’s
deep cushions, I shrug away
winter’s grip, pleasingly
on the cusp of sleep,
with the door closed.
Try it yourself. It’s a good way to celebrate the seasonal round.
