When Sparrows Walk on Water Friday, 19th December 2003
They're trying their best to take a bath but that's tricky in the quarter of an inch of water that is lying on the ice. They can't work a mere saucer-full into a power-shower of spray. Nor can they stop bickering; one annoys another and, as it flies off, the irritable bather pecks in peevish indignation in its general direction.
No wonder Tchaikovsky chose Swan Lake as his subject. Sparrow Pond doesn't have much to offer in the way of elegant poignancy. Even when performed on ice. Frozen in Time
It's like looking back in time. Right here, thousands of years ago, our ancestors must have paddled their dug-outs along the river here.
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As
I take a break to make a morning cup of coffee I can't help smiling
as I look out of the kitchen window: the frost has given, the surface
of the pond is liquid again and there, standing ankle deep,
in the middle of it with no obvious means of support are three house
sparrows.
By
the canal basin a solitary canoeist makes his way across a patch
where a stream inlet has made a chaos of the broken sheet-ice. As
the traffic at the bridge pulses to the sequence of the lights,
obscuring my view with passing vans, I watch him through a lattice
of shadowy ash branches, making careful progress in the fading afternoon
light.
New
Brown Pen
