Dave Borthwick

& a stonechat is there & gone, flashing white epaulettes. willow has woken.

thanks, Bob

& far out on the loch little grebes whinnying (a small horse on helium), big voices from little bodies - there is wing-shimmering & running on water, there are deep & sudden dives, vast & small-scale drama

all goes. sticking with it, & on.

gulls banking to hunt as tide loses its grip. travellers of winter storms find landfall all memory gone. invisible skylarks halfway to space (so it seems) jettison song. meadow pipit & stonechat perch & go. barnacle geese oar over.

go easy with yourself today

& reed buntings flickering out over water & back to tapers in rushy shallows, a sky clear & deep - & over the Solway, thin snow on fells

& the arclights ping on & the sky's ebb tide indigo hour & evening creeps later & the movement & stillness a time on the cusp of hesitation & go

& the lengthening bright, go wellytrudge a length of burn & find greywagtail behind the wire that keeps cattle & you out, riffled lochan on the way back & the settling in goes on

& March's fullmoonrise - high pressure at last - the lenten moon in lazy rise, open skies & calm dusk

1 night from full, the lenten moon

in common with deer in mammals, they can teleport. it is the only explanation.

& as you arrive a greylag sentry calls intruder - & the pair take wing, leaving a small armada of canadas to close formation (little grebe dives into another dimension) - the big hill surfaces, blowing cloud, light seeps as the sun falls

a wild day up west in good company, cormorant at their pulpit & crashing waves - pair of rock pipits flickering peripheries - fall of tide worn husks of shell, stout hull of a harboured vessel tilted, at rest

& sunset reddening
sapstirred bark
jackdaws begin roosting hour
skirting the moon

shadowy creeks of saltmarsh from where a little egret startles takes wing until starsmall curlew paces & stares * down to estuary forgotten post swings shadow to turn of tide & fading human footprints overlaid by avian waxing moon firms faint imprint on afternoon

& you do not wish to be lulled into a fool's spring, but a little light can do it, the great tit's tea-cher-tea-cher all day long & finding a toad traversing the lane, these things will do it too

& thin rain blasts through - in actual pulses a static shot won't catch - despite lengthening light all wet woods & no sun, no light to ignite anything - but the moss on the fencepost on the corner swells & takes it all in

& by dusktime the hill is gone, & all the land south. even the treetops are rubbed out by cloud. the robin is in there somewhere, casting & reeling a tune

& middle of a rashy field greylags moving purposefullly in a group, behind you the thrush so conspicuous of voice all day remains shadowy of body - 2 geese rise as a bawling bullock trots downhill, put grey behind them & row towards pocket of fading blue

& trees soughing in the rain, wind ruffling the lochan & a small jetty creaks - raft of mallard offshore the only other movement until sunset flares above plantation

& a robin appeared thursday - full-throated twilight to twilight since then - skirmishing off 2 contenders you have seen

& after washdown rain lured out by sun & followed flocks of fieldfare uphill to where the heron stood still while their ragged coat dried & the churn of sky turned dark again back under cloudburst with rinsed scraps of rainbow

founder on low battery mid-february but push out & uphill for clean air in the lungs windless & still but inhale the cold catkins & a stand of trees you will study the map on how to reach

so sorry... had all the evidence in front of me & submitted it... the speed of correction suggests we did all on spec

a line of trees with arclight burning through

& dusktime helps establish who is here as song increases - wren & great tit, bluetit, song & mistlethrush, intermittent chaffinch (peeping of gs woodpecker), dunnock overachieving in volume - robinsong oddly absent

if this is what I think it is, I have had yr back

& evening arrives & you escape - the light lengthening noticeably - reed buntings on barbedwire & the gap beneath a deerfence someone has made passage; way back a red kite cambers, steadies ENE

& the lane all mud & rotting snow - fresh flurries higher up - but 6°c ambient & mallardtracks letterpress ice, all in movement & swirl as you try to find rhythm to day, to place, to season

& that howling wind at 1am spread wet snow & left a foggy-headed morning of slump & thaw jackdaws in pairs convene & send slush tumbling down