Sunday, 28th December, 2025
Out in the garden last night at the end of December it was warm and bright. I was being over looked by this lunar – tic who was hanging around.
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.Philip Larkin – Sad Steps
In poetry, a crescent moon is often used as a metaphor for a new beginning. For Larkin, it was a new beginning that can’t come again. Don’t you just love him? The harsh, dark realism of his thoughts.
Having spent Christmas Eve with young people – kids with their whole lives ahead of them, Kids who wore their dreams on their sleeves for all to wonder at, Larkin’s words are an honest dagger to the heart for those of us who are so old we can only manufacture small lights of hope ahead. We can look to viewing new places and touching old friends but all the while bounded by the sadness that is time.
Last night I completed watching a potentially harrowing film on Netflix call Goodbye June. I know you will think I am mad but it had to be done. June – the Mother played by Helen Mirren – was in her final days as she died of cancer. Her family were in constant attendance and brought all the emotional baggage of family relations with them. The whole process was wonderfully redeemed by the way this family rallied around June in her final hours with admirable strength. She passed away as they performed the Nativity for her in the hospital room. There was something incredibly uplifting about it. I still cried.
… a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
Does meeting on the dark side of the moon involve living or dying? For me it is living long and dying late. Going out for a walk through the woods.
It is a grey, chilly Winter’s day. Even the birds are conserving their energy today. Ivy climbs vigorously up the trunks of dormant trees and dead leaves rustle in the undergrowth.
Nature will regenerate as the Spring warms up but there are signs of the present past as I walk down the tree-lined path. Who tied these ribbons of memory? Are they for memories of love or death or longing? And do you care, Dear Reader?