Earth's Immeasureable Surprise

First Sight, by Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds into the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden around them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew
What will soon wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

We got back from our trip up North on the 2nd, after a good drive on a sunny, but very cold day.  We saw lots of family and friends.  And we have all made it to 2025, thank God!

I thought this might be a great way to start the New Year, a photograph of the winter sunset in Sheffield - the sunset of the 30th - and this Philip Larkin poem about new life and the surprise of Spring being on the way.

Sheffield is a city full of trees - I remember walking to school under the chestnuts in bloom, and then in the Autumn term, hunting for conkers that nestled like treasures in the fallen leaves.  Watching the skies through the empty trees on this winter visit has been wonderful.

On the last day of the year we - the Captain, Nute and me - went to the cemetery at Crookes and left some flowers - tulips - on daddy's and Jo's graves.  There was an icy wind blowing, but it was lovely in a wuthering kind of way.

Jehovah made such beauty for us.  And I hope so much that daddy and Jo will be woken from the dreamless sleep of death and see it all again.  

That will be an immeasurable surprise, as Jehovah recreates the dead from the dust of the ground, and they find themselves alive again, in the restored earthly paradise.  Because how many of the dead even knew of the promise of the resurrection?   It will be such a joyful time.

As the King James translation says: "Awake and sing, all ye that dwell in dust!"