Saturday 4 November 2017

Local patch 20

In this week of All Souls and All Saints, the Levels and Moors have worn their own shroud. Thick fog hugs the land and gathers along the waterways. It is shape shifting and sense changing. Sound perspectives alter. Is the hooting owl close by? How far away is that barking dog?

Bilbo and I ran along the deep lanes in the early morning. There is a lot of mud. The rooks circled above us, their rough voices loud in the thick air. The trees are newly nude, showing their bare bones again. Bill dodged around a patch of strong scent where the fox had recently paused. A broad flick of white above a glossy black tail revealed the bullfinch deep in the hawthorn. There was a kerfuffle in the spindly top of the hedge and a sparrowhawk appeared above us, twisted and plunged into the lane. Barred chocolate and cream, its strong, sharp wings shot it along the hedgerow, low - like a bullet. Blackbirds called alarm from their prickly lookouts and the squabbling sparrows stilled. It punched a hole through the air and the fog closed up around it, as if it had never existed. 


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