Dave Borthwick

1st thing light raking through stormwreckage of cloud, blackbird berrybilled & speckled moves through

& 1st weeknight running on winter time - another warning of wind about to begin - a roll of greasy weather, but the powder blue of it, indigo flare over hills, the bruise of it pricked by lights, the living-in, moving with

& the storm a trickster, all lull & sudden blast, sharp soaking rain & blue skies in alternating bands - autumn accelerated, trees sere & the loch becoming an archive (its surface choppy, wavelets flattened in turn by gusts), sluicing & sinking

& hunker down as light goes, storm boelo working up & camera an impressionist of churn & scatter; the storm claims an extra hour at 02.00 (stormtime savings) - tomorrow dusk arrives 16.30, amber warning running over into meantime & its fast pace jarring on the slow shift to winter mind

& the split-trunk oak creaks more loudly after the day's winds, & the moon takes a look (you both retreat, having no power over what comes next)

& in the lull, between storms (between A & B), burns topping & revenant lochs rising again in rashy fields; the sky shines with aftermath & prologue both (it is twilight), yr headtorch blinks (its signal to replace batteries)

& gape of dusk, night rising & falling at once; a moorhen prrps & sits still in greylight & moonlight mixed (moon itself moves in & out of cover); at a certain point in the wane turbines turn on tail-lights

1st thing, frost & its ghost - giving up moss on contact with sunrise, remaining as grit in the shadows; a line of cattle huffs past steaming & murmuring, moving towards a parkful of dew

& when you get out a smoky wall of rain is already rolling in - breeze driving it drifts leaves down blurring to settle (jays complain somewhere deep & pathless, solitary crow sits it out, swaying) - loch is stippled & empty, wrens scan you with ticks from whins, the whole luminous gloom

utterly left-field post: in UK trucks, what does the green light behind the n/s rear of cab/above fuel tank signal/what is its function? - usually on larger rigs, often carrying liquid. *no AI reckons pls

& daylong dusk, best of the light in globes of hanging water; leathered leaves lose rusted edges to its weight; dip the oil tank & the hornbeam showers down a slowsliding reservoir; light a candle at 6 & it gathers leaves immediately

at the house of yr mother the small you can do in unhandiness the preparing for winter tiny repairs & moving essentials & then walk with her rising tide & huge blue redshank oystercatcher (bearing a legring) stalking curlew & family of wigeon dibbling & whistling #birds

along the coast, sugar-rock lighthouse over the curve of firth & hills collaging blue-gray scales - juvenile gannet prowling midsea, guillemots in the rivermouth - back in the gold & cold, sky snagging on wavetops

north again through slow tailbacks in autumn light & arrive to a sea changed to deep fourth season grey the glooming of hills

& as the moon lowered to set fierce brightening & the dark country of its north west dimly lit

@thehoursgodsends.bsky.social

& 9 months here out into gloam & deepautumn, jackdaws in roost cycle as cold falls - lochan holds oakleaf vessels on its still & mallards break this on takeoff (goldplated ripples) - the sun is still up on the moon

& back as sky fades after silver - 2 pipistrelles birl (temp. >10°c) & a barn owl looks you full in the face, passes through the dot of light & concealed dog, barking

& the gloam has little good in it - a web of smirr & a warm wind that stirs & coats its greasy gauze, transparent so some vantage but yr breath fugs yr own face - even jackdaws roosted early, done with its sticky cling

& Arcturus (you think) in the rusty birch by the bins

& woods beyond the pasture going ginger (side of the lane a thrush's killsite strangely abandoned) & the lochan holds water colour of rusting bracken sun below treeheight by 16.30

wide skies full of the chatter of svalbard barnacle geese, newly in & finding memory by grazing - the yin/yang of them jangly & easily spooked (a sudden roe deer caused ripples of alarmcall) - sun's full liquid light pouring & showers rolling in, soaked & drying & soaked all afternoon

& gloam shows between fractious showers & as you go rabbits scatter & a tawny owl hoos the movements of tail-lights below & arclights on hillsides a neighbour waves from their curtainless kitchen as your headtorch bobs by

& all day pied wagtail repeats dee-deet, sometimes matching yr keystrokes - increases volume when the pheasantshooters assert their anthrophony, becomes an earworm as they leave when rain arrives from the west

1st thing, 1st (light) frost

1st thing: starlight, strongly

& blackbird dinking time with scrap of rainbow, afterglow encouraging dark to exhale from wearied fields, but light lingers on water & pools in a basin of woods - an uneven skein of pinkfooted geese moves west to find the glint that for them means roost

& the gateway is an eye that reflects & gathers leaves, copper beeches tarnishing heavy & shabby - jackdaws are revisiting roosts & bewildered pheasants worldbuild by cloking from cover: a single robin enacts a map the dunnock trespasses

west & red kite quartering, desireline of an otter; bar-tailed godwit sunk in mud, little egret with suspiciously clean shoes

coastal. far low tide & everything distant. raptors (kestrel, buzzard) sweep scrub & merse. such geese that are on the flats (barnacle) occasionally spill themselves to settle. common darter with glitched eye buzzes you. butterfly a comma, the thin daymoon.

& unexpectedly in the clear

& yr winter neighbour joins you for coffee

october. sun low from the outset & moon high, changing places. friction of dry leaves, their papery withdrawal. damp of morning. damp of evening. sweet & deep reduction begins. hill constellations configure again. the sky is an old but unfamiliar language you learn again.

& last of September false moon in cloudroil & skies churn out a pressure front the gather & break gone Michaelmas from here negotiations with dark

@netherfield34.bsky.social - are you OK? Your absence is noted...

& 3rd night in a row the ripped lead flashing on a fencepost is a robin, perched; the lane luminous blue as the town's light pollution starts to effervesce; across Solway the 80s kid in you finds a graphic equaliser (military grade), & in such gloom after a long day you go

& 1st thing, mist levering up off the damp land (ghosts of watercourses), small moon falling towards flightpaths

& learn to walk the dark again (haptics of gradient & turn firming up almost 9 months here), spare headlamp for moon (upper right rubbing away already) & it candles on the lochan (mallards burbling somewhere, kwik & quibble of tawny owl), dandelion clock running slow in final phase

& caught out by early sunset moon already up when you set off strafed leaves feathering its telescopic view blackbirds dinking alarm in woods' underbrush lane through the farmyard flooded with light sky still & open to cold Venus a gritty garnet

& the deep blue receding NE, pulling colour out from all it leaves behind

& the changing front you lie awake as all the doors creak

rolling billow of cloud but then september's full moon lit bright through a tear in the fabric

ebbtide, between sea & tree filled with small, bitter apples - an oak that has grown horizontally creeps on soilless rock above headheight; receding strands feathers & ziplok bag of jellyfish, curlews begin to work the strand

& the rashy field filled spills into gravity & pools hinge & returned mallards group (a sarcasm of) & the moon 1 night from full brims over

& grey heron brings sky into the field to strut for pickings, doubles themselves on take-off & evening arrives early

@thehoursgodsends.bsky.social - alerted the moon was up by indicator light in tatter