After the winter sleep

It’s April, so lots of poems coming up. The first NaPoWriMo prompt, to write a poem about a book read a long time ago, inspired this one, a book I first read in childhood and have read often since. Tove Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll.

After the winter sleep

I woke with you in the washed clean light of spring,
the last patches of snow melting,
first flowers blooming.

We walked the waking house,
where winter dust and darkness
were wrapping up their traps and leaving,
opened windows to fill the rooms with birdsong.

We took the path down to the sea,
the jetty with the little boat,
and watched the sun peer over glassy waves,
storm treasures ribbing the pebble beach,

listened in silence to the waking world,
watched butterfly-flutter and budding leaves,
waiting for the sound of whistling in the lane
and our old friend’s return,
bringing spring poems in his pockets.

Unknown's avatar

Author: Jane Dougherty

I used to do lots of things I didn't much enjoy. Now I am officially a writer. It's what I always wanted to be.

36 thoughts on “After the winter sleep”

  1. One of my childhood favourites and I still read it now Jane! I love the ‘washed clean light of spring’, and these lines:

    ‘…winter dust and darkness
    were wrapping up their traps and leaving’

    and

    ‘waiting for the sound of whistling in the lane
    and our old friend’s return,
    bringing spring poems in his pockets.’

    You’ve made my Monday morning – no April fool’s day for us!

    Like

    Reply

      4. They maybe haven’t crossed the Atlantic 🙂 They were written in Swedish between 1945 and 1970 and all translated into English. They were already popular classics when I was a child, but in England. They are really great stories and the later, darker ones are existential ponderings on the meaning of life and loss. To be read at all ages 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

      5. I guess they weren’t that popular here. I saw my library has one copy of this book, but not the rest of the series. And that seems to be the only copy in the county library system.

        Like

      6. The style is maybe too ‘European’ to appeal to American kids, too strange. They’re still immensely popular in UK. They’ve made animated films of the books too. I love them. They’re so deep and the humour has a very adult feel to it.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. She was a great writer and artist altogether, but I think I prefer her children’s stories to her writing for adults, except for her autobiography which is wonderful. So much depends on the translation though. I wish I understood Swedish!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      2. Tales from Moomin Valley is sad. I think she wrote them after her mother died.
        She had an unhappy marriage (she was a lesbian so it was bound to be), divorce and afterwards lived on an island with her companion. I think they were mostly happy, though Jansson was depressive. Two-Ticky, one of the Moomin characters is based on her.

        Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m glad you know about her. Anglophone publishers tend not to take much notice of foreign language writers until they’ve been dead for about a hundred years and become classics. It’s the supposition that literature written in English is the only type worth reading.

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment