The Magic of Frost

There's something very beautiful about frost, just as there is about winter in its entirety. Alice Oswald captures this feeling in a stilled language particularly intricate and beautiful itself.


Pruning in Frost - Alice Oswald

Last night, without a sound,
a ghost of a world lay down on a world,

trees like dream-wrecks
coralled with increments of frost.

Found crevices
and wound and wound
the clock-spring cobwebs.

All life’s ribbon frozen mid-fling.

Oh I am
stone thumbs,
feet of glass.

Work knocks in me the winter’s nail.

I can imagine
Pain, turned heron,
could fly off slowly in a creak of wings.

And I’d be staring, like one of those
cold-holy and granite kings,
getting carved into this effigy of orchard.