Dog And Crow

It's World Poetry Day and I saw on Twitter the John Clare poem Crows in Spring which I haven't read before. I have a lovely crow which visits my makeshift bird table every day and from which I have derived a certain comfort since I lost Ollie dog.  This is the first verse:

The Crow will tumble up and down
At the first sight of spring
And in old trees around the town
Brush winter from its wing

The theme of the day is "Always a Poet, Even in Prose." Clare wrote prose as well as poetry. His Recollections of Journey From Essex tell of his four day journey to Northborough on foot and sleeping rough after he had absconded from High Beach Asylum in Epping Forest. In 2014 I found the asylum and blipped about it.

Thames Water turned up unexpectedly after lunch for a recce and while I was preparing to lock the gate after the guy left I heard familiar barking. I rushed indoors to grab the camera and got the above shot. Our house is quite a way from the road and usually I only get a glimpse of this lovely German shepherd through a gap in the hedge. I'm wondering if it barks as it passes because it remembers when Ollie was here? Ollie hardly ever barked.