Richard Westcott's poetry

Looking at the banks and hedgerows at this time of year, I wonder how anything small – or even large – that lives there manages to survive.  Everything’s withered up or simply gone.  Of course, there’s no expectation of leaves or flowers, but where are the fruits and berries, the smaller creatures lower down the food chain essential to survival… just what is there to live off?  It’s a bare and empty larder, hardly even offering any shelter. And yet, deep under layers of moss, beneath bark, beyond and out of sight, sleep seeds and eggs, cocoons, life in shells, little wrapped-up tangled bundles of creatures, even slumbering, hibernating animals tucked up to weather the winter. It’s always been like this.  Many must perish, but a few – a select few – live on, to carry the colony, the tribe, the clan – perhaps even the species – into better times. Yet despite its regularity, predictability, even necessity, such a slaughter is hard to comprehend. So, we tell our own stori

There’s a lot of them about at this time. Along with the cribs and holy families, stars and shepherds, Magi and assorted animals – not to mention the robins, lit up churches shining across the snow, reindeer, stage coaches, drunken mice and yule-tide logs – here they are, singing, blowing the occasional quaint instrument or just standing around looking decorative.   Not often flying in fact – perhaps even the most credulous find it hard to imagine those wings extended and in action, least of all in a windy night sky.   But they’re certainly around. Yes, the angels. Angels – those hybrid creatures like the centaurs, combining – quite unrealistically, even if desirably – elements of different creatures. How on earth could that horse body support the upper half of a man instead of its own, properly balanced, head and neck? And imagine the massive pectorals required to provide the downward pull on those necessarily huge wings! Yet, at least since the winged Nike of Samothrace