red sandstone and sombre angels

Wild geese, over the house in the early morning. The woodpecker, doing its co-opting-the-feeder-but-mostly-just-hanging-there thing, eyes half-closed. The first time this happened I thought it was a woodpecker-choke thing, requiring the Heimlich manoeuvre, but it's happened so many times now with no ill effects that I think it's just something they do. Crocuses poking through fog; fog snagging on thick damson blossom, on blackthorn. Green flush beginning. A hare at the crossroads. Caterpillar of nose-to-tail-lights on the A38, all of us thinking there's somewhere to get to. St Thomas churchyard with its tall imposing firs and its sombre lamenting stone angels. Disconcertingly, a small abandoned new-looking child's scooter lying in its splash of pink and purple under a cedar. The mother in me, fed by the part of me that sees a sack in the road and assumes dead body, is alarmed. Thirty or more swans by the weir at the Mill on the Exe. A young father, three children, yawning and yawning, mortality greying his face. Two Muslim women students crossing the campus in full burka – is this their choice, here in England, or is it imposed on them? Now crossing the Exe the red soil starts, heart of Devon, pink sheep, cob and soft red sandstone houses. More poetry for more rural primary children, and a village that has had significance for me in the past.

Each moment a kind of home.