frost ferns, June 20th

Some mornings, when it has been cold enough but not terribly so, and maybe there was rain that left the windscreen wet, the ice is just an opaque sheet. When the sun hits it, it is glowing and opalescent from inside the car, but mostly just a nuisance to be scraped or melted off as quickly as possible.
But when the conditions are just right, truly bitterly cold so the ice grows quickly, it takes a dendritic form: frost ferns. Molecules of water from the atmosphere link up, positive attracted to negative, quickly quickly now, no time to settle into a tidy close-packed stack.
This simple little molecule, just three atoms, but all these local minima in its energy landscape – in each of which is a different crystal form, like surprises in the pockets of an advent calendar. And inside the car this morning is like being inside a Christmas decoration. And oh, the glitter when the sun hits it as we start up the driveway, navigating by memory until the sun and the heater melted them away.

atom by atom
each finding its place
frost ferns grow

Sutton bonfire night 2023, snapshots

An apricot-satin ribbon of sky
inscribed with skeletal trees
slips below the horizon
as white lines catch the headlights,
flick flick flick
tachycardia fast.

3 things / what colour is hope?

For the dVerse prompt “what colour is hope“, to write a poem about 3 things that make you happy:

 

Hope is blue –
the blue of sky
mirrored in every puddle,
and in every full dam
when the drought has broken.

Hope is russet brown –
the brown-paper skin
on a tulip bulb
ready to be nestled
into rich black soil.

Hope is yellow –
the yellow of the leaping flames
of this sympathetic magic
with which we call back the sun
on this shortest day of the year.