Away from the worlds of medicine and science, academia, and public service, Sir Kenneth Calman has a keen sense of nature, including an affection for the Island of Arran. Here, in a second sample from Afterthoughts, his new collection (Kennedy and Boyd, £12.95), Glasgow University’s Chancellor relishes “the sound of winter.”

             THE SOUND OF WINTER

A glorious bright morning and the grass white

       and  thick with frost

I looked over the still and seemingly silent field

Where Mungo was playing and rolling in the cold sods

Everything seemed quiet as the light shone through

       the trees behind me.

Then I heard the sound; the sound of the end of autumn

Pit, pat, pitter, patter

In the cloudless sky it could not be rain.

I turned round and saw the yellow and black-spotted

       frozen leaves

Fall from the lime trees and hit the frosted grass with

       a pitter, patter,

They dropped one after another each unique each

       with its own sound

I looked across the field to another group of trees,

        and there was one

Whose base seemed to be filled with a circle of crocuses,

       yellow and bright

Yet these were dead leaves but foretold the spring ahead

In the midst of the sound of winter, and the end of autumn.