Sky, Sea and Kindness

This morning the sky reflected the weather forecast – sunshine and showers.

Our trip to the sea was cold!

I have given you this beautiful poem before. The last few lines were quoted today in The Guardian by Sarah Perry who commented that this poem is “always pertinent – now more than ever, as civilisation cracks like thin ice over a deep black lake.”  It is also important that we hold on to optimism.  The poem is based on a true event. Larkin says he had fed the hedgehog some weeks before and then lost sight of him until he mowed the lawn. He was said to be very distressed about it, as you would be, and this poem was the result. Beautifully crafted, of course.

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed.  It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably.  Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (Faber and Faber 1988).

My conversations with WordPress have resulted in my uploading photos to Flickr and then linking them to this blog – a bit more work but it does work! Thank you to the Happiness Engineers who have helped me.