Wrapped up well - a sort of poem

Wrapped up well

Walking down the lane

Freezing air shock to respiratory system

Struggling to keep an even pattern

Breathing natural replacement of oxygen

Striving to breath correctly in through nose, out through mouth.

Steaming spectacles

Worn to prevent wind whipping into eyes

Doesn’t stop streaming tear glands

Like an old biddy.

Move arms as well as legs to keep warm.

Take hand out of glove to press a button for a photo.

Immediately fingers and thumbs are nipped.

Quickly enter glove again.

Move legs in a specific stride.

Regain a rhythm, an unconscious achievement.

After a while breathing becomes natural.
Doesn’t require concentration.
 

The body feels no cold

even though wind cuts like a knife on ice on the forehead,

the only skin exposed under a hat

scarves wrapped around neck, nose and mouth.

 

Study the tractor in the field

Using to advantage the frozen ground

Dig the bucket under the mighty rock

To and fro he works at it from all sides

slowly exposing it from the earth into the trailer.

Farmers see advantage in all weathers.

It makes me happy.

Wend my way into wind with lengthening shadows before me.

Turn at the junction.  
Head back

with sun before me now shining warmly on my face 

as robin flutters overhead in the branches of a tree.

Jewelled beads of ice shimmer in hedgerow skeletons.

Look at a little old lady in a purple coat and white hat.

Oh, am I like that
in my black snowman’s outfit?

Wrapped up warm, 
many layers,

breathing in the freshness from Siberia,

Happy to not be there.

Happy to be here.