Today I have no words, no fresh words. Here instead is that 13-line sonnet I mentioned way back when, that BBC R4 used; brought to mind because at dusk yesterday I saw a snipe.
Snipe
Never before but in snow, lately, from between
the woodland margins at the crux of day and night
a snipe has startled from the peat and russet leaves
now rimed and crackling; in its swift-winged flight
ghosting the snow-lit dusk I’m reminded
of a shade I can’t quite catch from the hinterlands
of my mind. Something magical in its silence,
its speed, that long bill piercing the wind;
something hidden; so that today when I read
Heaney speaking of the soul as weighing ‘roughly
the same as a snipe’ the words snatch my breath;
its name – snipe snipe snipe – all day as I go about
nagging my throat, taken up residence in my chest.
~ Roselle Angwin
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