#SeasonalSonnets 2019: 1st December

Hello my lovely readers

Now that it is the start of December, we're also at the beginning of this year's Seasonal Sonnets series, which is in turn the first part of the project I have planned - to write a poem for the next 365 days.

This opening entry, and indeed this year's entire series, might be perceived by some as decidedly unseasonable. I'm writing it from South Africa, where it's summer. However, as I spent my earliest childhood over here, to me it seems exactly the right way around. That sentiment is the substance of this sonnet, since we're staying with old friends in the mountainous Western Cape village of McGregor. Last night we went to a gig by yet more old friends, the awesome Edi Niederlander Trio, and today we're just chilling in nature (in the shade). Below the poem is a picture of the surrounding countryside.

1st December 2019

This year's a homage to much younger me,
who finds relief and safety in warm weather
and really thinks festivity should be
in summer, like Christmases she remembers.
I'm thrilled now we have made it home at last
and grateful that my body lets me travel.
Revisiting some places from my past
is helping me catch threads which have unravelled.
Shy hopes are building for my future too,
inspired by the chance to be in nature
which is at once familiar and new -
I feel that 'young me' may now mature.
For scenes to mark the start of this December,
I'm glad to have the beauty of McGregor.