(This month’s renga was done in collaboration with StAnza Poetry Festival. Many thanks to Annie Rutherford and Eleanor Livingstone for all their help and support.)

All shakes and shivers:
tree, birdfeeder, hand. Snowflakes seek
unchancy twins.

The brae: kids sledging, a Breughel’s living spit
come squalling with delight to life.

Above the vaccine queue
at the Municipal Hall
the sky’s in scrubs

The land wears its muffler,
bringing stillness to a frantic world.

The lunar new year is ox-stubborn,
Lockdown or no, home pulls on a long line,
‘Gōngxǐfācái’s from Dundee to Singapore.

Wade through drifts for bread and eggs.
One slip scrambles the whole meal.

Ice floes on the Tay,
the snow crunches underfoot,
sunset pinks snowy roofs.

Single-figure temperatures feel warm.
A £15 meal for two. On Zoom. Slush.

We’re caught between registers:
Fantasia on a theme by frost, or
Adagio for streams of meltwater.

Blood orange…