Here is the rest of day 4. Do look at last year's entries, for the photos. York minster has a lovely window of the 4th day, in the east window, which is presently being mended.

WINTER

Show us the bare essentials, the strong shapes
Of the land, stripped of its covering; no distraction
From colour, to ease and please; just wispy mist drapes
And arrays the landscape in layers, laid out for inspection.

Ridges and clefts unknown in the summertime,
Strength or scars that the leaves concealed,
Roll and dip in austere monochrome,
Raw in their majesty, patterns of hedge and field.

The trees stand naked in rattling latticework,
Stately structures of power and grace,
Each species unique; the fan-like openwork
Combing the sky, fingering, filling their space.

New understanding, viewing the land in its emptiness;
New recognition, each skeleton tree displayed;
No claim on our love, from colour or comfort or sweetness,
Just a naked old friend, showing how strength was made.

SPRING

The dancing spring, tossed in the sparkling wind;
Strands of fragrance weaving through the air,
Gusting around, assailing us from behind,
Leading us through the sunshine, showing us where

Shaken tassels are showering gold.
Sunshine and gold dust scatter the gleaming twigs,
Wychhazel and catkins, defying the cold,
In swirling sunshine, decking the sprigs.

Birds furnish the bareness with their songs,
Extra value each tumbling, chirruping note,
Filling the waiting spaces. Rights and wrongs,
Little-bird joys and sorrows pour from each throat.

Timid shoots peep shyly from the earth –
Leatherlike timid! Tough against snow or frost;
Snatching each moment of warmth; brilliant birth
Of tiny glories, glowing when needed most.

Snowdrops, crocuses, celandines starting the year
With blazing success, undeterred by the biting wind.
Trees toss the sunshine. Skies cloud and clear
Through filtering twigs, still silver behind.

With perfume and breeze and silver and gold and emptiness
Birdsong launches the year into beauty and busyness.

LATE SPRING

May, like a blousy teenager,
Knee-deep in froth of Queen Anne’s lace,
Festoons the country lanes in tossing blossom.
In city too, like frowning dowager,
With dubious taste,
She preens in mauve and yellow, all showy and handsome.

The trees, like vertical flowerbeds,
Unroll their banners above the roads;
Parade in every shade of white and pink.
Joyfully, every breeze sheds
Petals and perfume, fairyland clouds,
Swirling confetti for brides on the brink.

Millions of flowers
Sway on the branches and drift from on high,
Blending the ground and sky in coloured distraction.
Tinted showers
On shoulder and pavement scatter and fly.
One flower on my sleeve draws my attention.

Here, in sheer perfection,
Such tiny detail winks a lashy eye:
Roundy-petalled may, with red-tipped whiskers.
Wilder, a Chinese dragon
From chestnut candles in the sky
Tumbles his fiery way to join his sisters.

Laburnum’s yellow cascades:
Every pea-lipped flower perfect;
Lilac’s tufted cockades:
Tiny crosses, cupped, protect.

Grinning lace-faces
Foam in the hedgerows in billowing abundance:
Veils for the graces,
Flung and flaunted with innocent extravagance.

Among the curtseying swags,
May bows and flirts,
Ruffling the frills and flounces
Of her dancing skirts.

SUMMER, 1950s

Cosy gloom of the attic where we play:
Outside, the heavy grey clouds are threatening rain,
Rain, rain again, cloaking the summer’s day,
Like a friendly uncle, ruler of this chill domain.

Sweet summer’s empire rarely touches this coast.
Caressing fingers retreat from the north-east wind;
Snatched from his nibbling breath and muddling mist
To safer haunts: snug, cosseted valleys, inland;

So, under that sheltering cloak, what lives we led!
Cowboys and Indians galloped from the dressing-up box.
Princesses screamed. Dragons growled to be fed.
Dancers twirled. Designers adjusted old frocks.

Personalities bloomed amid the lace and feathers,
Happy activity, squabbles, compromise, kindness;
Safe and dry, ignoring the outside weather’s
Rage, or sulks, drumming raindrops, grey blindness.

Now endless sunshine beams on us from the telly:
The packaged, fantasy world of Australian soap.
Such unreality! Turning our lives to jelly.
No interaction! No involvement, to teach us to cope.

Those chill, grey summers sheltered a world of fun,
Living and growing, oblivious of rain or sun.

MEDITERRANEAN SUMMER

Hibiscus! Colour of life in a still world!
World of petrified heat between white walls;
Dry cage of stillness; Silence, as foot falls
On muting gravel; Leaves hanging, not a breeze curled.

Too hot for beetles, birds, any living thing;
A world of stone and heat and deathly calm;
Life has closed up; no sound, no breath of balm;
All essence desiccated. Here you fling

Your trumpet-note of brightness, scarlet, white-veined,
Living and strong and delicate, like a maiden’s hand;
Life’s plenipotentiary, full-powered, command
All stakes in the vacant air. Life can’t be drained!

Red! Alive! A trumpet in the silent heat,
Focussing joy and hope in the empty street.

AUTUMN

I loved your works already, marvelled
At leaves fringed with hoar like glittering fretwork,
Heart-aching pinks and browns, as the garden shrivelled
Into grateful rest, spiders’ webs a diamond network.

Even decay has glory, shrouded in peace,
Still pleasing, with its varied contours and berries of flame.
Round or straight, shiny or shaggy, at ease,
The leaves lie comfortably, returning whence they came.

Who taught me the beauty of fading greens and browns?
Elsewhere, the wild glory of flying red and gold:
Autumn, riotous or peaceful. The sodden path drowns
My footsteps. In the quiet, solitude takes hold.

Your company; our gaze together; in peace I gather
The memories, the promises, of autumn, with you, Father.

AUTUMN SESTINA

Under the empty trees, the fallen leaves
Trail like a tawny scarf, a slough of gold,
Snake-patterned. Gawdy autumn stripped
Lightly and skipped, tossing and twirling the old
Riches of summer. New pattern the autumn weaves:
Final flare-out, farewell crackle, all ripped.

Now light can bless the littering gold.
Haunting gloom lurked under summer leaves,
Murky and sombre. Spangled light now weaves
Its own tiptoe meander: peace on the stripped
Glory; peace where the wind has ripped;
Peace where the new life will spring from the old.

Zig-zag the tangled track the snake weaves;
Zig-zag the crumpled skin it burst and stripped
To crawl out new and younger: leave the ripped
Remnant, stamp of its being - still the old
Smoothness, new crispness. Just as the leaves,
Brittle and crunchy, in browns and fading gold,

Still keep their nature: the self that autumn stripped
Is still the insistent self that spring weaves
And weaves again, still leafing among the leaves:
Serrated or simple, palmate or ripped,
Spring-green, spring-silver, now russet and gold,
What new leaf unfolded, still clasped in the old.

Still the strict structure, though dying and ripped;
Still chestnut, still willow, still oakleaf; the old
Pattern still self-same. While autumn, fresh-stripped,
Skips to its rest through copper and gold,
Or pauses, grown thoughtful, just scuffling the leaves,
Brown now and sodden, dark trail the snake weaves.

Final fling for the old, scattering gold;
Bare woodland still weaves pattern over the leaves;
Burden tumbled, load ripped, naked and stripped.