storm

Lanes deep-littered with leaves, twigs, branches; higher up a tree across the road. The little brook's burble has become a bellow. With all this rain perhaps the aquifers are refilling? In the half-light this patch of wet lichen on rock might be a river delta, aerial view of, in the neolithic, the Fertile Crescent. At half-light last night and again now a young owl yips and squeaks in the valley. On the verge a sparrowhawk lifts off with a young thrush taloned. This year the air's thin of swallows. Verdure peaking and spilling in this strong strange storm – I can feel if not see the extra electromagnetism in our atmosphere present from the eclipse, and everything's charged and heightened. In the neighbouring field the meadowgrass runs like a herd of deer. Here I slip off the known, cast off into wind, take wing.

~

In town, cup of coffee below the castle with its Norman crenellations. Jackdaw squatting, clinging against the wind to the parapet. A ragged flag. Some tattered plastic Jubilee bunting, a few extra miles of petrochemical rubbish in our landfills. The café's full of single dads with their half-term children. Chatter of sparrows from the ivy colonising the derelict warehouse. In the florists' a huge bearded man delicately manipulates tiny mauve flowers for a bouquet. The flower shop. The fudge shop. The natural face cream shop. Each time my feet take me towards a thought of my mum; each time I have to correct – no, not in there, not now. Walking downhill, bending into the wind.

~