A View From My Window On A Late Sunday Afternoon In Winter Poem by Pete Crowther

The sky has cleared, it is a duck-egg blue,
so still, so light, the clouds are few and white
like Royal Icing on a Christmas cake,
no wind, or very little. I watch my neighbour’s
chimney smoke across the road, it rises
in a thin and fitful plume that gently drifts
sideways, then soon disperses in the air
like prayer. On either side the window frames
a lattice-work of branches, stark and bare
against the sky, like Chinese characters
in black ink, or pebbles of dendritic agate
such as one finds sometimes upon the beach.
Beside the darkened escallonia hedge
a cloud of winter gnats perform their dance
in the lonely air, they rise and fall, advance,
retreat, frail bodies that for a moment catch
the misty light from the setting sun. There are
no birds or other insects in the air.