Friday 28th February - end of Winter...

Going by Kurt Vonnegut's definitions of the seasons, January and February are Winter, and March and April are Unlocking, neither Winter nor Spring bit something in between. I like this idea; it means that if March is cold and wet and frosty and drear I won't be feeling cheated out of a proper Spring.

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Like several other blog friends, I'm 'following' a tree through the year. 'Following' is an odd way to describe it, after all, as far as I know my oak tree doesn't march around like an Ent (Lord of the Rings) or suddenly set of to frighten the wits ou of Macbeth. At least I've never seen it moving... maybe I should see if I can creep up on it unawares... 

Here is the glorious beauty, spread out in an arc, reaching for the heavens. That strange light coloured pole apparently propping up the right hand side is a determined, but probably doomed horse chestnut tree that must have started from a conker possibly as many as forty years ago. I certainly first noticed it back in the 1990s.

Here are some of the top-most twigs, each with a little knobbly bud, promises of leaves to come;

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I think it becomes harder to find music as I near the end of the poem. 

'Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,'

Those church bells, are they the echoes of prayers from the beginning of creation, as they escape the confines of the Earth's gravity, rise above the Earth's atmosphere and travel through space and time. Scientists used to say space was a vacuum, and I'm not sure that this is still the current thinking. Maybe space is full of the widely dispersed sounds and scents of incense, prayers, hymns and songs, reaching out into the universe...

The soul's blood; the life blood of the soul; not some red liquid flowing through our physical bodies but a spiritual essence flowing through our hearts and minds. 

Is this 'soul's blood' just... prayer?

This is a short, thoughtful piano piece called 'Stars' by Peter Sculthorpe. I didn't want to choose church bells ringing peels, or anything so... obvious, direct... I wanted something with resonance, space, consideration, leaving room for the imagination. I love it; I'm sure I've got the music somewhere, or maybe I'll have to buy it.