record of secret visitors
who in a certain spirit
claim the place their own

how many coats can a tree have
before I recognise its make
unpruned, overgrown, knolled and prickled,
growth struggling from the ends of trawling branches
gifts to this unknown tree
for going through these uncertain seasons with me

eggs

the bare tree starts to shudder into life
those tiny bows tightly
ruched and gathered along the branches
a pale is-it-green warble of change

butterflies hold still
a quake in the air
there is a swarm somewhere in the thatch
thrumming thrumming thrumming
hypnotic swirl of bees
I take a path away
a few in my hair make temporary homes
then threshold over  into the cloudless blue

blossom and blue sky

first bluebell

monday april 4 Tash Bidgood visit

someone bowing in the dock leaves
black-coated
a worshipper in open view
a pilgrim of the low flowers
softly capturing
with a click of care

dancers in landscape april 3

dancers in Landscape april 3

rain drizzle  walk
seed poems and chocolate biscuit
humainity and being
imagination and shamanism
brick wall and riding on the wind
writing green books
widening what is art
embodiment
walk drizzle rain

march 30 lucy neal first visit

jo shapland visit regarding blossom

spring hawthorn

glittery branches float
air-heavy shimmer
sleep
breathless quality of trailing threads

sharpness of  touch
taloned and grasping

dangerous squiggle of generosity with a thorny heart

susanne wolf visit march 28

musty notes written on a brain

it is the hawthorn in my head
repeating and repeating
it is the hawthorn in my head

judy discussing WW1 teas

mystery flower

March 10 Earthquake japan

sun arrives on this mildly extravagent spring moring
sky striped with white
rough chalk sketches, lining the blue with line-messages

as if we were drawing a bowl of string against the sky, around the earth,
so many, someone could pull the end and tighten...

the world is parting company with itself

March 7 Alan & Robert & Edward Thomas

march 3

 this human earth

Are we as alive as each other -
this human earth
creature or leaf
bone or apple
brick or tongue

I turn the pond upside down
and lay it flat on the sky.

Like a weightless, million-skirted wasps nest
who can tell what depths they both hold

I have to return to certain worlds.
Oh earth, hold me up as I find my way down.

feb 28

the fall of day
still chill
old dinner-plate grey clouds

flip and wiget of wings of the nesting bird in thatch
lisp of one higher in the air
the curling one
clipping and sighing, dancing and simpering, kettling, rambling, ticking, chucking,
mixing, delegating, jumping,
jittering around the valley

the edges mute up as light leaves
a silent swallow gently flippers across the sky

february 25

4 visits later

this morning -  sun, two dogs appearing more scared of me than me, with their trecker doing her round,
gratitude is shared
to have a boundary
to have no boundary
to have this world to hold me up
light turns and colour bathes the view
dense, damp, drying, jumping, laughing, strumming, slipping, sectioning, dripping, marveling, musing,ricocheting, deep sound of woven bird language, cows, hawks, trucks, dogs and droning cars, a yawning mow, a tripping rapid release
all this noise greets the sun!
Someone in the two days has chopped back the growth of thorns and reeds


two mornings earlier, a mist, a soggy trip

a visit with Leslie and Scarlett and talks of the event for May 8th

Judith and I and our day with no preparation and its unflowering

february 14

a slice of sun
an edge of cloud
a lung of life
a twitch on my ragged soul
the littering of catkins
upright and bright
yellow and true
every breath  held
give back
my lung of life
my edge of cloud
my slice of sun

Dancers in Landscape February 6

February 7

the bare hawthorn ghosts against the yew
like old dresses-
taken away,
leaving the stitches-
little lobs, snitches, knotted lines-
Delicate as long gone perfume
Its blurred outline crimped and lonely.
Revealed only by the greenbacked yew.

I hear a rock band of wind
a dropping, cluttering, bird of noise
the restless traffic of  air


It all sways-
cloud to tree to grass to brick
the doors flurry and smash, shocking the walls,
fly and warp like leaves
reverberate and shift
It rushes up
even in the gloom and groan
winter is usurped

Tash Bidgood photographing snowdrops

The sky holds onto the tops of the trees
pulling them up by bevelled edges
claiming them with cloud

I take my seat
settle
real ripples on the pond, from under the surface
whinge of saw
a landscape of gently nudging from both sides
earth and being

High birds fly randomly, black
against clouds and blue
one has caught the wave
glissades higher, wings motionless
a dash against the cirrus
lost
space opens

can bone grow into stone
aching muscle into creaking branch
rumbling stomach into rippling pond

eyes grow wider
lazy around the edges
to catch the flickerings

an eye that listens gently

treasures of the damp, ungainly field
are like cold coins
lain on a warm cheek

Fingers cold and bumbling from rain and cold, its surprising how one can write from an action in the wrist and not fingers, might even call this embodied cold!
Any exposed place - hillock, crevace, ridge, drop, is overtoppling  with water
the earth can't imbibe more so it gathers swelling on the surface, each step swallowed as one goes, everything blurs its shape with overabundance
today the silver birches have turned a dingy vermilion mottled with brown, the hazy pink nimbus rained away

The barn doors swing like giant eyelids,
opening and closing the view.
Here, look at this, shelter from that
A loud bang as one slaps the outside wall, light in, pond reflecting
The other wavers to a close
and swiftly, silently back again
The wind reveals what it wants me to see
Both wide for a moment, as if gone, then shuffling in gently twinning.
The choreography of wind and doors,
Slow Stravinsky rhythms, insistent yet unbalanced
intricate and subtle
Wind has never been more visual

stumbling up from the charcoal tree
I see the first snowdrops
I have a long way to go in observing if a crowd of snowdrops appears unoticed
their likely fates to be drowned or frozen
without a touch of light , they look grey

the looking needs to start again
the looking is always new
the looking is always ahead of you
the looking has only just begun

Just wanted to sit for a while, watch the clouds

the door cuddling up to me in the wind, touching and support my left arm
slice of light marshmallowed by clouds
the dot to dots of a shallow of birds, starlings, sparrows, too far away to see

too cold to leave the body
toes warm in socks, backs of thighs catching the wind, and the round of my shoulderblade has cold holding it, drawing my mind to my body makes it present,
the lingering tension in the stomach,
the held point at the tip of the breastbone
skin of hands and head in the air

the spongy pinkness rises from the winter birches, the colour gloams and holds
the creak of  wing and branch
the crucial outline of my body dissolves, easy to leave

 glance of hair across my forehead  -
I look at the mud at the bottom of my trousers
cartography of moving through mud
might go un noticed if I just flung them in the washing machine
a map's a map, a way in, a way to follow
Forsenic policemen could trace my every move with the earth on the bottom of my boots
a walk traced over and over
Does it go into the bones, the memory, the body, the land

the sky suddenly seems huge

the birch pink deepens and I shiver

Looking at the outline of the oak against the heavy white sky
a repetitive, breathing,swish, unnerved me
swish, had me look up, swish,
I was sitting in the centre of a V ( the other way up) of Canada Geese
white and grey against the white
symmetry of wing and pattern
an uplift of magic
on this seeping, dull, lightless day

It is bright sun

ice crystallizing the bricks

breath of steam, the only moving cloud

The birds are back.
At least six kinds
The birds are back.
Stacking their claim to holding onto sound

I listen like a dull grey seed hugging my winter self.

A shard of shadow pierced with light reaches under the barn door.

 Must walk home.
Holding tense against the ice
gentle          cautious             careful

Hold it tight.

strong sun and shadows
snow is actually ice crystals like rock salt enlarged
clinging together to reflect enough light to be white
and give the appearance of snow

there are no birds
just the wind
no rustles no squeaks - just air
almost bleak
are they all in hiding?


off towards christmas

Looking at tracks trying to work out which tracks belong to what sort of car

Enough light in the sky to give things a colour, more pronounced and variable today

deep dulled magenta of faraway birches
black shadows in soggy brown pines
bright orchre of oak
old fashioned dark green velvet of yew
turning tan of last lying leaves cradled in icicle snow

A day later, snow on the ground, snow falling, the view has drawn in and the sounds are muffled
Even sitting in the doorway snow has blown in and covered the pages, crunched  together  bits , midway between hail and fluff. Snow moves sideways and the branches of the trees which stayed dark yesterday
are being outlined with white today.
What other colours than white -
copper brown at the bottom of the young oak
sledge green of the reeds around the pond
black dead leaves on nettles
a slumped green of grass, almost a shadow green one knows it should be green yet coated with white it loses particularity
Our footsteps are already filling up, left behind two minutes ago.
Another covering of snow hits the page, a breath filled with tickles, flicks and moisture.

snow about to fall

December 17

late sun

December 14

A squirrel skimming along a branch of the oak
Birds glueing on and off trees
The clouds curve into the earth
Late sun glows the sky
The pit of dew in the long grass
In absolute still
Of sundown