Dave Borthwick

& you find fullmoon eventually - cowl of cloud streaming off - slanting fast into dark

was eh, 1 room up from Dan, once nodded you, shared a punt April 96, have cosy book-length poem idea where death is just context. interest?

but you do not accept unsolicited MS... you in on this, Lewis?

& the longroad open in exhale of water, SW clear & in want of stars - but NE & E a rug of cloud, fullmoon slight & partial (perhaps visible later & higher), you chase 2 grown lambs back through broken wire

& the moon (1 night from full) climbs out & into cloudbank, autumn skies do slow dusk drama (shotguns are rapping, all knuckle on bartop) & rubbery engines of pheasants: there is a thrush decaying to pixels & a heron you mistake for a kite; guns pause, tawny owls open up

thank you for yr courage. Go. Fucking. You.

& the river smells of the hills this early-autumn sunday time a shift is building this acorn mast year scattered where stormfloods flattened a bed dipper in shallow rapids ducks & dives with confidence

please can I explore the site a little & get back to you?

we're all fine, thank you - we got off lightly compared to those higher up

thank you

& stuttering bands of rain & wind - in breaks sound of chainsaws - glint of cars beetling over brash, bird neighbours glean wreckage (chaffinch, dunnock, house sparrow) #birds

lovely vocals too

& late afternoon the storm swept in, shotblast rain & buffeting, shoulderbarge wind (roadsides piled with torn timber an hour in, river topping & windows collaged with soft shrapnel of leaflitter)

& then coming back a workglove ripples - underneath a half-asleep toad bucks again & settles & you cover them over & leave them to it (night of warm & howling wind & wires singing, of small hare that bounces in your headlight, of sough & whoosh of rusting branches)

they are, to quote a friend, 'motherless bairns' - no behavioural education or guidance. There is nothing positive to say about it all.

& october elbows in with dreich slouch, rim of the quarry a dryedge of scab & the usual hornbeam ablaze, the hill pushed back & acorns split by wheels in the lane - jackdaws figuring roost & pheasants glaiketly wandering, uneducated, unsure, lost

& last of September, maize being harvested over the river - 1st year they have sown it there - take it in as it pours of rain, back at nightfall to squelch & skid, bare khaki of land

@thehoursgodsends.bsky.social

michaelmas & light is suddenly vital - 30 mins of it will seep through a crack in the year this week as autumn deepens - no arclights or yard-drench of LED yet, just tiny intensities of bright (the moon's keel cuts a shine above), the sky silvered as scar tissue, all begins to wane

& dusk a slow-going blast but behind you it is already dark below the tops, a stitch of pink footed geese headed coastal, an appraising 4x4 slowing to see what's for sale, the smell of fox piss

1st thing, jackdawclatter sunrise

& snagged in the wires, still free, the new moon is body & apparition

& dusk of thin infrastructure - the primitivity of poles of wood hard against seasons, the taught promise of power & comms, the stick that brought you this, a fibre

Go You Nicola!

😕

hear you

also had an irony miss, would say. had a long day.

I am glad of that

Gmph. That is all. Don't do politics on socials, only in person. But.

Noreen. Please.