The old man and the tarn…

For Paul Besley… — inspired by him, his writing, and a recent visit to Eel Tarn.

As the Sun also rises, so the Moon rests. Its waning glow, low in the mauve sky as it drew the Man here, has departed. But he still feeds off its allure as his pulse climbs, and he pauses, breathing hard, summoning support, as well as the air he so craves. He moves on to meet the dawn, pushing his body well beyond the valley-bound limits it frequently fights to meet. This race was too urgent to refuse, and all obstacles must be overcome, or sidelined.

Few creatures stir so early, the young calves so puzzled by his appearance that they cannot label him good nor bad, so regard him as both. Finally, they return to their cud-chewing amongst the muddy grass. Even after such a long absence of rain, some becks still happily feed the ground. The Man tracks this one eagerly; then turns from it to face down the radiant horizon.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind…

The ballad of Woodhouse Colliery

the siren blasts pre-dawn today
wakes the locals at five-thirty
it is time it screams for the chosen few
to get down deep and come up dirty

what we do is what our grandas did
it made some sense back then
when our father was nobbut a gangly kid
but (umm) have you seen the papers

our houses cost nearly nothing we’re told
too small too cramped so old and cold
yet there are some who fail to afford them
so they go and do what their grandas did
when their father was nobbut a kid

but not to power a nation this time
this time they’re making nowt
unless you consider the world’s biggest hole
the country’s nuclear dustbin
an achievement of sorts
rather than an act of futility
a great big hole of nothingness
devoid of all utility

they are scouring the planet’s intestines
not producing the value of old
as they know it’s only shit they shovel
not exhuming a dark form of gold

what we do is what our grandas did
it made some sense back then
when our father was nobbut a gangly kid
but (umm) have you seen the papers

dig it big enough they say
and all Sellafield will fit
but what will they do with the great big hole
where that festering factory used to sit

they’ll build a mountain of excrement
unneeded to the sky
and add another Wainwright
where the fulmars used to fly

And pay no worship to the garish sun…

before the dawn
with thanks… to Barbara Aves (13 March 1936 to 21 December 2020)

the daws drive dark before the dawn;
gather for the final roost
     before the sun has chance to rise… –
no light today; just shadow… –
     mere shadow without end;
     sad margins robbed of symmetry.

     the daws I see
          from nowhere –
          out of nowhere –
               rise:
          solemn airs
               gnarled within the gloom;
          carefree graces
               wrenched without the light.

     so many vanquished stars;
     so many stolen nightfalls;
          from nowhere –
          out of nowhere –
     the clouds I see
          astray, mislaid;
          minor keys unturned.

the silences, eclipses,
the nothings and the nowheres,
the shadows we are made of,
the dark we are afraid of… –
     all shaped the same
     but never visible… –
     as
the daws drive dark before the final dawn.

A long December…

It may be down to the fact that I’m listening to – no: immersed in – Counting Crows a lot, at the moment (a very extended moment that has been absorbing me for many, many days): but there seems to be a preternaturally large number of black birds flecking, piercing, spiralling, twisting and weaving the air, at the moment. (That phrase again.)

The weight of this sad time we must obey…

I watch, and am become like a sparrow
That is alone upon the house-top.
– Psalm 102:7

It may have happened a million times. Or it may have happened just this once. Not that it matters. Not to me. Not really. But to the birds, almost certainly. Preeminently the lone shadow which still sings… – Shakespeare’s “substance of a grief” made manifest.

Lockdown diary #4: My words fly up, my thoughts remain below…

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
– Shakespeare: The Tempest (V.i.88-94)

As with so much horticultural minutiae, it was Felix – still not yet accustomed to having the run of the garden (or – as he must see it – patrolling ‘his’ domain) – who first spotted the tiny creature, and then alerted me (his unrealized chaperon) to its hovering presence; swiftly (and coincidentally) followed by The Guardian’s consistently high-quality Country diary column. I say “tiny”… – but the “creature” in question has a big name in so many respects: “Bombylius major, the large or dark-edged bee‑fly”. Nevertheless, it is small. Yet another of nature’s brilliant and beautiful works of precision engineering, and perfect, startling, purpose. [Bee-flies are sometimes called “humble-flies”. But never, sadly, “humble-bees”… – an eponym reserved for bumble-bees: who, if their buzz (or hum) is anything to go by, are actually quite assertive!]

Lockdown diary #3: You are never parted in the beating of your heart…

As is so often the case, the body was in virtually flawless condition: the only clue as to its demise the dull eye (ordinarily… extra-ordinarily brilliant yet pale with cheeky inquisitiveness and intelligence) hanging loosely from its socket – seemingly beseeching me for help that could never come. Even two days later – when no-one, no-thing, had been to claim it: neither fox nor magpie; buzzard nor kite – it remained impeccably embalmed in its lignite sheen: and so I carefully gathered it from the verge – the weight in my hand remarkable for its lightness (as if the departure of its life-spark or soul had rendered it hollow) – and laid it carefully in its temporary resting place. Normally, we would have buried it in a quiet spot in the garden. But times are not normal: so I swaddled it, instead – muttering a few thoughts of ritual respect and regret… – in a large workaday carrier bag; and then placed it, heartbreakingly, in our green council compost bin.

Lockdown diary #2: Spare your arithmetic, never count the turns…

And then – suddenly; startlingly; steadfastly… – it is Sunday. The chilling, seemingly fixed north-north-easterly – ferrying in yet one more ferocious (but not this time vacuous) official foreboding of its own, in the form of a frigid wind-speed alert… – seemingly purifying the pavement of all pedestrians. All the silver/grey/black cars, however, immune to its volitions, are stationary: as they still – thankfully – remain locked to their owners’ homes – many warmed with the rainbows and soft toys that demonstrate love, hope, and temporary happiness. [Andrà tutto bene. “All will be fine.” (We wish. Fervently.)]

The cooling breeze – the cooling day – it brings is concretely cleaner; and, as I circumambulate the churchyard (the building at its heart now closed even to such prayer), I launch my atheist’s supplication quietly upstream: craving continuing clarity, and everlasting expanded green spaces to breathe within. At the exact instant I traverse the main, southern entrance, the air resonates with the midday chimes. I feel blessed. Perhaps this presages something. But… – and I hesitate…. Benevolent… or… the other kind…?

I choose the former; and ramble onwards.

Let it die as it was born…

I didn’t even have time to focus my binoculars. The shock slammed them hard against my surprised spectacles: anomalous barriers carving the amazement unhesitatingly into my face. The squabbling, squeaking sparrows didn’t even have time to hide: lined up ‒ as they were – regularly, innocently, spaced along the fence-top as fairground targets are… (although these ragged rascals were – it turned out – surprisingly safe: protected by perspective and pathological fledgling hunger; paradoxically, those wiser, those hidden, those mute, were not). The air didn’t even have time to part – literally playing its supporting role to perfection: greasing the event, the skimming of its constituent atoms, of the life it fires. Of one life concluded.

For going out, I found, was really going in…

Yesterday – coupled with a developing desire to prove my brittle body once more able – the weather beckoned me far beyond the longing windows of home: with the high-cloud-shrouded sun at my back, and a sluggish breeze easing its surging heat. My first thought upon fastening the garden gate was of the church as objective; but primal instinct pushed me further – to revisit last year’s iterative ascent through Tysoe Hangings, and onwards to Upton House. With every initially uncertain step taken with conscious pain and caution, I crossed the main road close to Church Farm Court; eased my rucksacked self through the metal gate; and prayed that my body (and resolve) would be resilient enough. All I could do was walk, and discover if I could also achieve my heart’s desire….

Where, last year, there had been wheat, was now linseed (and where there was linseed – on the plateau beyond Sugarswell Cottages – I would find wheat): a four- to five-year rotation that seems increasingly fashionable and profitable. Sandy soil under this brilliant cobalt crop was beginning to fissure, though; and the meadow’s margins were dune-like in their desiccation. (Even in so sparse a crop, skylarks nested: their sweet purling such a soothing soundtrack.)

Eat, prey, fluff…

It is an overwhelming and life-affirming privilege to share the existence of another sentient creature: one devoted to you, and dependent on you, to such a large extent that the alliance rapidly becomes symbiotic. Such a relationship has to be based on mutual trust, as well as love, though; and both parties have to be frank as to what to expect from each other; what they will need; and how much time and affection they are able and willing to give. That so much of this goes (and has to go) unsaid should be no impediment (in fact, to some, this may seem to strengthen the bond…) – even though many would preach the value of constant open communication in cementing any such connection.

For those who respect and love animals there can be no bigger thrill than one coming to you of its own free will, understanding what you are trying to communicate, and trusting you not to harm it.
– Claire Bessant: The Cat Whisperer

That I am writing about the association of human and feline may well prompt derision from some quarters; but the majority, I hope, will innately grasp the truth at the heart of this hypothesis. [As I type, Felix, the characterful dark tabby who prompted the above, is curled up tightly next to me, dreaming: as genial and graceful a proof of vulnerability, faith, and commitment, as I think you may find. He knows no hurt will come to him here; and his credence and company, in return, both comfort and calm me – despite the plethora of hairs wisping over my keyboard and screen…. He is therefore the ideal companion for someone as disabled as myself: especially as I am currently confined to home (even) more than what passes for usual, fighting (and perhaps finally starting to subdue) a variety of maladies….]

Paradise Regained…

So let extend thy mind o’er all the world,
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend.

It was an email from my good friend Paolo that did it. Not directly, of course. Just a little nudge; which, in turn, morphed into a diminutive, but nagging, suggestion; which, gnawing at a widening area of brain-cells, wouldn’t let go. Thirty minutes later, I had changed into some light walking trousers, a thin T-shirt, and a medium-weight fleece. (Although the only marks in the sky were man-made – the number of planes travelling over Tysoe having seemingly increased in the last year or so – the Met Office warned of northerly twelve mile-an-hour winds: making seventeen Celsius feel like fourteen.)

What air’s from home…

Sometimes – and sometimes more fittingly than we may care to observe… – Mother Nature schedules her tasks and happenings more fruitfully and frequently (and therefore with much more granularity) than simply the succession of seasons obvious to even the most imperceptive of eyes. Waking late, yesterday morning, my habitual appraisal of the front garden, and the youngish oak which stands sentinel over it, revealed a large selection of cleanly-broken twigs on the green verges beneath, scattered by the recent sharp winds (harbingers, it seems, of yet more of Winter’s cold, unforgiving, grasp; and its reluctance to depart – despite Spring puncturing the jackstrawn turf with the tiny xanthous blooms of narcissus and primrose; and the local finches’ songs, above, swelling with Summer warmth…).

My colours are as red…

It was as if they were precisely as I had left them: serene shapes bathed in blazing sodium – a tinge flattering of the redwings, particularly as they settled; although the companion fieldfares and thrushes likewise glowed with the radiance painting the village’s warmed brick chimneys (some, like ours, wisped with telltale drifts of light smoke). But now the sunken sun shone westwards – not from the west – although my suspicion was the same: that, perched as high in the skyclad oak as its topmost thin fingers would hold, these returning travellers were relishing this tepid coloration; were making the most of the new winter’s protective evanescent light, of its ebbing eight-hour span.

And the courage never to submit or yield…

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell
Pain, it appears, has no appointed programme; nor consequent sleep any scheduled assignation. Alive (afterwards) to the fact that I had spent too much of my day in writing – itself a diversion from the devouring distress of a deepening migraine, gnawing at my left eyeball like some resolute rodent after rotting fruit – it was, however, the subsequent clumsiness – born of fading concentration; my proprioception misty and maladroit (even at the best of times) – that was the crucial moment’s mainspring: an instant unwinding, a lightning strike cascading through my stricken, confounded limbs; rapidly unfurling its coercion, before reconvening all its clout, condensed, at the accustomed spot, speck… the spike where my circuits were sabotaged so very long ago.

What hath night to do with sleep?
No manner of oscitant opioid, lethargic anxiolytic, or torpid tricyclic would rid me of my wretchedness and wakefulness: an expected early night failing fast; successive struggles satisfying me that the only remedy – however short-lived – should be yet more distraction: my boots, recuperating by the front door, cajoling me, inveigling exercise and exploration; demanding to get back on my feet.

Windmill Hill revelation…

The village yet damped-down beneath the oil of night; the only report, the high-pitched, mock-bark fracas of fox-cub. In the nucleus of nautical dawn, all is grey: green-grey grass; mauve-grey cloud; brown-grey stone; black-grey horizon – the world the colour of mallard, wood-pigeon, blackbird, and rook.

Leaving the Shipston road, the burble of an old valve radio being spun between stations grows with the wheat. My footsteps and stick-falls are silent, here: but still that splashing of song sooner turns trickle; soon turns stream; turns river; turns waterfall – drenching me in an incessancy of resonant comfort; drowned merry in a sea of skylarks. To my right, a crisp rustle of stalk. Then muffle of noiselessness. Only as I move on, the blades once more immobile, threat dissipated or dissolved, does the torrent of Matins restart.

The soul that sees beauty…

Sunday
There is a hierarchy, it seems, to Tysoe’s with-sun-rising birds. As the first sodium-bright slash of dawn slices the horizon, the barn owl – its wings the shade of the night-mourning sky it haunts – yet circles the windmill: peeved, perhaps, that my presence has quiesced the small creatures in the verges, trembling umbellifers, ruffling daisies. The hedges here serenade me with the river-runs of goldfinch; the gossip of sparrows; the bossy robin; the caution of blackbirds. The crops, a sea of skylarks: effervescent; ubiquitous. But none yet leave their roosts. It is the raptors which rise pre-eminently on the cool air: a lone buzzard, one lazy, subtle flap of its wings propelling it yet higher. A glint-eyed kestrel shearing across my path; grasping the dead branch of a wayside oak from which to study me. There is nothing here to interest such a hunter; but yet he waits until I have passed before busy wings pull him beyond my sight.

A male pheasant, paranoid, dull-witted, staggers away from me: its drunken pose and anguished cacophonies aimed at naught; only rendering it more manifest. Thirty paces I tail this manic meandering, before remembrance of cover emerges between those frenzied eyes.

Is this now My Hill…?

As far as I am concerned, the only thing that can be achieved, when both my mind and body are suffused with deep, thick, viscous torment (echoed by repeated, random interference in both ears: stereophonic sussurations of spite…) – as I have stated so many times before – is walking. Apart from summoning lurking asthma, I know there is little worse I can subject my aching frame to. Plus, of course, my depression will ease, the further my journey. And on a morning like this – clear skies and concomitant summer balm; goldfinch twinkling in the hedges; chaffinch in the fletching oaks; buzzard and skylark floating above; sheep lazily grazing (heavy in their winter coats); and cattle uniformly resting in the shallow corrugations of ancient fields – what else am I to do? It is too generous a day to be shackled by sheets and shocking stair-rods of pain.

The first mile is hard: as if battling through stacked mattresses. But, reaching the sown fields, resistance fades, and my limbs begin to move with supernatural ease. Through my second gate, the path flowing beneath me, last week’s fresh cowpats have been grilled by the new heat, drilled by flies; but fudged treachery lies beneath the further stampede of hoof-prints, incised as the cattle migrated to new pasture. Despite the surface-split soil, moisture lurks. I wonder for how long.

Faith, I’ll bear no base mind…

It is seven months and six days since I last donned my fervent walking boots and headed out of the front door in search of the spiritual nourishment only nature can provide – the act of doing so more psychologically and physiologically strenuous than I had initially envisaged. But such challenges are there for us to subjugate… if we are to be alive to our values (and alive for them). Should we let either external constraints or internally-driven apprehensions suppress (or even oppress) our compelling predilections and true-hearted desires, then surely our very identities and individualities are at risk of corruption or cessation.

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream…

It was the moment first-light shape-shifted – imperceptibly transmuting from astronomical to nautical dawn – and, although my vision had long adapted to the gelid gloom, all I could discern ahead (as if insinuating myself deep into one of Dürer’s Meisterstiche…) were motionless, almost monochroic strata of indecipherable spectral shades: pitch against jet against coal, against ebony, soot and sable. And yet I sensed them, stock- and stand-still. As, assuredly, they sensed me.