While I was out this morning, the lovely Mr S caught a photo of Bullfinches at our feeders. He refilled the feeders just after taking the photo. It is emptied in a day!
Coming back from Chacewater, we spotted a beautiful tree full of blossom. I took the photo from the moving car.
Seamus Heaney was born on this day in 1939. What a lovely piece of writing, dedicated to Marie Heaney and called Sunlight. It conjures up a beautiful domestic scene, full of warmth and humanity.
Mossbawn: Two Poems In Dedication
1. Sunlight
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyedin the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wallof each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stovesent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.Now she dusts the board
with a goose’s wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nailsand measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.And here is love
like a tinsmith’s scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.
