& flat calm, silence until you send up five mallards to rouge in sunset; two pinkfooted geese pace & twist their necks to watch you go

& christmas eve, the village lights below & farms above: the small, & good

& out as the sun is already below the larches' knees - the river & back - a buzzard crusing & then (truly bizarre) pipistrelle bat by december moonlight

& contrast of late blue sky gave out to allow the new moon to cut through - that which will swell solstice to next year's 1st full - setting into late afternoon, slipping under the wire & behind the ridge

good solstice to you if that is your thing, folks

& no brightness on the shortest day, instead a garland of sheepfleece & leaves, & a notional line crossed - mistle thrush calling from another

& close to sun-stilled but deepwinter it moves more quickly - flare 8.30 & gone 7 hours later: a buzzard sits parallel as you watch sun set (under empty jackdaw nests, 2 robins in angry chase through jagged tangle) - aftermath of clucking fieldfares, startled blur that may have been woodcock

& corvid hour in a keen wind they understand, that suits gather-&-break decisionmaking; floodpools silver flatly & you send a wobbling block of pheasants cloking into the youngwood; fields away village christmas lights pop on gradually, begin their night-time jitters

& night arrives before you are ready, chop firewood by head-torch, dome of sour twilight shows where the town lies & the sycamore gleams bare & green as you raise yr head

all day it was evening - gloom & glimmer - water pulsing powerfully, wavering & searching, overtopping ditches or flung high in HGV wallow & wash - & yet the fierce winds warm, ripping agri-wrap & testing twine securing gates: a hunker down & wait but a strange version, unwinter

'a dry day for once,' a neighbour says, though it is anything but: land pooled, soaked, engorged & infused with water - by evening the air floods horizons with ghostly walls of it, & in your headtorch it swarms & sways, you walk underwater

& air thick with rain without foregound or background all focus corner of the eye

a lease signed on the thirteenth, morning before a storm: small house on a farm below a lochan, ragged evergreen horizon & scrappy oak in the yard - hope, & a january flitting

& 16.00 sky breaks itself up (the scrap of heavy weather), corvids turn east all loud & fragile - there is banging of metal on metal & 3 gunshots that rifle over fields; a tawny owl squalls & a pickup slows (you think they have seen the camera blink), then goes on under wedge of light

& rivers have slunk under pasture & risen to form watery places of grazing these pop-up wetlands along the village road mute swans reading sealanes by action of too-warm wind

& work as storm Bram ships in all afternoon (river already in its woods, prowling the alders), an agency of its own (birds roost early), the heavy sky shutters & dark comes down as a slammed door

& fullbeams in tunnel of backroads dark, black seeping from ditches spills ink on the road - fiercely blue throb then guttering out

& all awash, the plantation releases vapour & sheets of rain disperse it - heavy lantern droplets catch such light there is, a branch of mixed geese wavers in downpour

& a brass section passed over at 1st light - find them late afternoon deep in pasture: whooper swans fieldhopping (ghostly juveniles & alert parents), grazing in cold rain

& november's fullmoon - this is all you will see of it, bright smudge in thick cloud & pouring rain: a searchlight, a beacon, mothsmudge & pearl, a flare & its dispersal into dark

& what yr father would have called a filthy night - greasy rain & fat, oily mud - quiet but for wind (corvids went to roost 30mins ago) - moonlight comes & goes, glancing on river & wavering in pools (always occluded when you look up), dark comes swimming & out of focus

afternoon errand - & the 1st kestrel you have seen in these parts in years

pause on the way home as moon lights the vertebrae of plantation river's back soft pastel of horizon & hard white light beating down

& the rinsing rain - local whatsapp pinging with alt-routes - centre of the shot your neighbour's light, reaching over the river

hei december

out at moonrise - next glen over & its river (frost that lay down last night has not risen): along its flank with sun falling to yr left, star & satellite fall in burnish & taper (a LAX-bound flight cuts through alder) - chill & the air wide, icechip call of riparian dipper

& the midafternoons ache winterlight now, a throb of heavy cloud circling slowly to roost - grey heron glares & tenses, ready to rise & merge with that sky

lateafternoon errand: on the village loch goosander double up against buffet & chop

& no yield all day until the wind picked up, holed scrappy portals to dusk & shivered the pools on the rutted road silver

& on the backroad, new moon clutching the old, breath of frost as the stars start to grit through

& a tectonic sky, great plates of cloud - asbestos blue - levered in by 14.40, the long dusk of dark horizons

the local festive tractor run (charity donations this year for neonatal unit): airhorns blasting the route all round - end of the farming year, more gather & give, more working & fixing, it figures

late-afternoon, coastal reserve, that period when roosting is vocality & performance & then the lift & circle, barnacle geese entering sunset & staying there, whooper swans down to overnight, the whole brassy biophany loud & present *bonus goldcrest

& gone 10pm the flailing goes on - the snap & grind & whine - the silver of the broad beech a resistance & defeat: what deadline & what dollar?

& -7°c at sunrise but frost softening almost immediately in the distance the town's river casts off a layer of chill & reveals its course

another gathering in black, yr funeral jacket showing wear

& out at point of glisk lastlight flushing through when a heavy cargo plane roared out of the sun tracking NNE small snow on the tops & straggling grass along the burn holding wafers of ice

wind back as mist rises & thickens & in the rearview the vice of cloud closes & in front the headlights froth with pixels of vapour

& the sun intense in its fall at 16.00 then the long singe & blush as temperatures dipped below zero & the dark welled up & faded in

lunchtime & rooftiles retain frost which pertains too in sheltered nooks of garden the sparrowpeople puff feathers & face the sun from barbed depths of hedge

& through the riverfield (its strange flat line of stones punctuated by hawthorn), soft & waning deepautumn, squeaking of long tailed tits & buzzard issuing key from nearbare larch, wheeting nuthatch deep in cover

the consolations of insomnia

& the new wind welcome & clean, fieldfares spend the afternoon flitting ash to hawthorn; follow the burn a spell crunching leaves & sending up woodpigeons, come back having seen goldcrest flit, one lousy blur as proof

& the notice to quit arrives finally, the postie quiet (he has delivered several before yours), sheets whip in a cold wind as you sign for it, & corvids rasp, go as-the-crow-flies south over the site of a small clearance

& you take overwhelm downhill & leave it there inhale cool air & listen to the fields pop in drainage & watch the grey burn surge & hillside lights flicker through rusted trees the sky drains light from the land to glow & darken

& 12 hours into deluge (the hissing of water, a whitenoise rushing beneath oversound), the backroad half-flooded inching back, we all creep & inch like water: you seep home amid the rise

& though you only find space as light slips & rots it seems you work on avian time & it is noisy at purple hour as cloking pheasants alarm & blackbirds winterdink, corvids hold quorum & the robin repeats dawnsong - headlights on nearfarms swing: all prepare for dark

& aching brood of afternoon lightens late & the youngwood rings tinny with voices of coaltit & goldcrest a line of starlings passes messages up & down itself black smoke issues behind the ridge & a diesel engine deepens sound & fades