Dave Borthwick

& no yield all day until the wind picked up, holed scrappy portals to dusk & shivered the pools on the rutted road silver

& on the backroad, new moon clutching the old, breath of frost as the stars start to grit through

& a tectonic sky, great plates of cloud - asbestos blue - levered in by 14.40, the long dusk of dark horizons

nah, annual flail of hedges (normal, arguably necessary), but there is... nuance shall we say as to how & what & when & how, just a part of debate of place

the local festive tractor run (charity donations this year for neonatal unit): airhorns blasting the route all round - end of the farming year, more gather & give, more working & fixing, it figures

late-afternoon, coastal reserve, that period when roosting is vocality & performance & then the lift & circle, barnacle geese entering sunset & staying there, whooper swans down to overnight, the whole brassy biophany loud & present *bonus goldcrest

& gone 10pm the flailing goes on - the snap & grind & whine - the silver of the broad beech a resistance & defeat: what deadline & what dollar?

1% tho... jfc

& -7°c at sunrise but frost softening almost immediately in the distance the town's river casts off a layer of chill & reveals its course

another gathering in black, yr funeral jacket showing wear

& out at point of glisk lastlight flushing through when a heavy cargo plane roared out of the sun tracking NNE small snow on the tops & straggling grass along the burn holding wafers of ice

so sorry, Brian

wind back as mist rises & thickens & in the rearview the vice of cloud closes & in front the headlights froth with pixels of vapour

O thank you Sari

when I read Brendon Chase to mine (with redacted mysogyny) it had opposite effect & we had to lure the buggers out with food

<rumbles under breath> but whatever you think I am saying: that is right

& the sun intense in its fall at 16.00 then the long singe & blush as temperatures dipped below zero & the dark welled up & faded in

lunchtime & rooftiles retain frost which pertains too in sheltered nooks of garden the sparrowpeople puff feathers & face the sun from barbed depths of hedge

O there is a story there!

Oooh. Missed the call entirely...

& through the riverfield (its strange flat line of stones punctuated by hawthorn), soft & waning deepautumn, squeaking of long tailed tits & buzzard issuing key from nearbare larch, wheeting nuthatch deep in cover

the consolations of insomnia

& the new wind welcome & clean, fieldfares spend the afternoon flitting ash to hawthorn; follow the burn a spell crunching leaves & sending up woodpigeons, come back having seen goldcrest flit, one lousy blur as proof

it will be fine because not-fine is not an option. Thanks, Brian.

o thank you, Bob, that is really kind of you to say

& the notice to quit arrives finally, the postie quiet (he has delivered several before yours), sheets whip in a cold wind as you sign for it, & corvids rasp, go as-the-crow-flies south over the site of a small clearance

& you take overwhelm downhill & leave it there inhale cool air & listen to the fields pop in drainage & watch the grey burn surge & hillside lights flicker through rusted trees the sky drains light from the land to glow & darken

& 12 hours into deluge (the hissing of water, a whitenoise rushing beneath oversound), the backroad half-flooded inching back, we all creep & inch like water: you seep home amid the rise

crikey, thank you

O thank you. Hope you are resting that leg to be back out painless & mobile soonest