Winter bird: on a painting by Shozo Ozaki
Tony Ullyatt

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
—e e cummings


Winter:
the earth draped
to the horizon
in that whiteness
that clenches
the eyes yet insists
you gaze upon it.
The filigree of
bare branches curves
with the deep snow
lodged there.
Amid a myriad shades
of glistening white
a small bird's silhouette
the epitome of stillness
in this starkest
of landscapes.
It knows this
is perfect weather
for carolling
its pure song resonating
far into the impeccable
quiet of the winter woods.
It's quite irrelevant
whether we listen.

The Diamond Cutter
Elizabeth Jennings


Not what the light will do but how he shapes it
And what particular colours it will bear,

And something of the climber's concentration
Seeing the white peak, setting the right foot there.

Not how the sun was plausible at morning
Nor how it was distributed at noon,

And not how much the single stone could show
But rather how much brilliance it would shun;

Simply a paring down, a cleaving to
One object, as the star-gazer who sees

One single comet polished by its fall
Rather than countless, untouched galaxies.