The Sodden Land
There is a special kind of beauty this time of year, and I mean not the obvious beauty of a field of frost or snow draped forest – beautiful though those things are; but rather the draik beauty: the beauty of water pooled on meadow edges, that's ponded unnaturally around a row of trees, that tips gently into swollen streams; the beauty of dank ponds, grown larger to the memory, sprouting sepia stems and dipped by the dead leaves of reeds – the beauty of the cold marsh and the mud-filled paths of the fog-bound copse. The beauty of the flood.
25 Dec 2023