Withernwick, Winter 1947

they dug a path down Church Lane with walls that , to my child’s eye seemed to rear up sheer and cold as though reaching for the sky at the extremes of my memory not much else is really clear but some how in my mind it remains a significant year horses died , two great Shires up to their shoulders in snow just yards away from stacked hay yet yards too far for them to go; they stood shoulder to shoulder, great sad eyes opened wide to stare as if into distant worlds well beyond the ken of any villager gathered there. in sadness, yet in celebration of a hard winter now broken. these poor dead horses a small reminder, a token of winter’s depth of power, and soon to come a spring with blossoms to burst to flower. and we half forgot lanes blocked by snow piled hedge top high and every single step taken an ache in a cold leg and straining thigh. and those dead shire horses long gone to the knackers’ yard still drift back in memories of that winter, long, deep and hard. I’d stood holding mam’s hand and I remember that I cried maybe at the shock at seeing those two horses had died they come back to me in dreams still across those many years and even now at time I shed some silent and sad tears so may years ago and my life has moved on I’m the last of my generation all the others are gone nobody remebers those shires and very few want to hear about January 1947 and that devastatngly hard year