Hymns To Sunrise

glorying in a spring morning

Just unfurling their folded wings - perhaps this very morning - sticky buds open into vivid horse chestnut leaves, 8 April 2025

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush

That overhung a mole-hill large and round,

I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush

Sing hymns to sunrise, while I drank the sound

With joy; and, often an intruding guest,

I watched her secret toils from day to day -

How true she warped the moss to form a nest,

And modelled it within with wood and clay;

And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,

There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,

Ink-spotted over shells of greeny blue;

And there I witnessed, in the sunny hours,

A brood of nature’s minstrels chirp and fly,

Glad as that sunshine and the laughing sky.

John Clare, ‘The Thrush’s Nest’

The winding path from the lane that leads up onto the heath, early morning 8 April 2025

Hello and welcome, lovely Between The Moons friends.

Today - if it’s all right with you - I thought we’d head out on a little spring walk along the lane together. Of course, we can chat as we go. But first I want to tell you about a memory that was sparked as I stepped past the dragon and out of the front yard.

As a child who spent a lot of time in libraries, often waiting for my English teacher dad, I had plenty of time to study the rows of spines on the shelves. It helped that I was an avid reader. ‘Imogen is an avid reader’, wrote Mrs Lister on my annual primary school report, sending me scurrying to look up the meaning of ‘avid’ in case it was something bad. If I didn’t actually read every single book in the children’s fiction and general crafts sections I certainly had a good stab at it. And I was always checking in case something interesting had appeared since the last time my dad had been called into a staff meeting.