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10th January, 2025

Friday Poem – ‘Birch’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams

Photo of bare trunks of silver birch standing in the snow.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Birch’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams from her sequence ‘The Tree Calendar’ republished in The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems.

Birch December 24th – January 20th After Twelfth Night comes the reality of winter. When the greenery’s stripped down it’s barefaced, blowing under the door. Mean days dragging out a fraction more before dark, make our myth of spring ridiculous. I walk out into the stark endless moment of January. Old snow slumps in the hedge, stretching the fields wet to the birchwood, raw black tangle against the grey. Mud ruts, brown ice under my boot snaps and seeps as I trudge up to the sad ranks of trees, the thin skin birches in their thaw. These brittle twigs swept clear of leaves whipping along the light, points of dark bud concealing green, I’ll tie a bundle to my broom, for flight: no shelter here, the rain falls through this frostwood, the sky stares between. The bramble jags, the stag horns of the scrub bad musk of leafmould, in the dusk that stirs behind my shoulder. Birch stems lean to the loud stream crowding beneath the wind, thrashing their rods at winter stumps, at the cracked, dimwit days. Think of the woods brushed with a green haze. Think of the covered hills filling with cleaner light, and a gap in the clouds for something to glance through. I stoop in a cold shade gathering twigs for a journey

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Related Books

The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems

Hilary Llewellyn-Williams

Buy now