halftwo
Wird Batcher
Leaving behind the Blackcap and Willow warbler songs battling in the rowen, between water and wall by the wood where Chaffinches spout songs from steel-blue bills, brightly, cockily handsome, the path leads out to lush meadows, ranunculus studded – ten thousand suns nodding to the one above, where umbels froth and drooling cattle graze the grasses between stately sycamores. The broken promise of forecast rain begins to lift the mists in these valleys.
A Treecreeper dashes from a trunk to snatch a passing fly and resumes its stealth up the tree, carrying prey for young elsewhere. Stone walls, crevices crammed with foxglove and fern , hide a hunting Wren and a Robins’ nest, then sculpted gateless gateposts: a gap-toothed grin reveals what lies within: hay meadows suddenly high, thistles thrusting through clover and grass and sedge, where butterflies swim, jerk and dive to the surf of blooms.
Bracken rushes the walls – filling the fields to brim the tops where Meadow pipits sit. And from the drowning wood the suffocating sound of Blackbird swells out into the warm, meeting the sweet of Skylarks' tongues falling from the hazy bright where Black-headed gulls, having left the water and the harassed Oystercatcher, swoop on St.Mark’s flies swarming in the thermals.
On sheep-cropped fields Lapwings defend their new-hatched chicks from Crows’ attacks, relaying their defence along the slopes. Lambs, already too old to frollick, bleat from juncus-heavy marshy meadows. Linnets sing where Swallows swoosh. A Kestrel carries a dangling mouse toward the abandoned, half-tumbled farm.
But it’s the Cuckoo’s call that pulls – from wood to meadow to hill, along the ale-brown beck trickling between the cleavage of the moor, dropping in swirls and cataracts beneath oak and rowen, and still-bare ash on the south-facing, sunnier side. Untickled trout in dappled pebbly pools, sway in the flow of moor-cold water. Young heather blushes on the breast of the hill – coloured like Burgundy in the bottle, and bilberry fresh green and rushing to ripen, too-young fruit just showing. Out here, up high, where summer is short, Green hairstreak butterflies mate and lay, keeping low even in the sun.
Now the bubble of Curlew song ripples down the summer’s noon and, as if in plaintive answer, Golden plover call from the high tops where Grouse sit awaiting their fate.
And the Cuckoo continues to haunt – its echo mocking along the crease of the valley, flowing, following back to the woods where warbler and thrush duet in the now-warm day.
A Treecreeper dashes from a trunk to snatch a passing fly and resumes its stealth up the tree, carrying prey for young elsewhere. Stone walls, crevices crammed with foxglove and fern , hide a hunting Wren and a Robins’ nest, then sculpted gateless gateposts: a gap-toothed grin reveals what lies within: hay meadows suddenly high, thistles thrusting through clover and grass and sedge, where butterflies swim, jerk and dive to the surf of blooms.
Bracken rushes the walls – filling the fields to brim the tops where Meadow pipits sit. And from the drowning wood the suffocating sound of Blackbird swells out into the warm, meeting the sweet of Skylarks' tongues falling from the hazy bright where Black-headed gulls, having left the water and the harassed Oystercatcher, swoop on St.Mark’s flies swarming in the thermals.
On sheep-cropped fields Lapwings defend their new-hatched chicks from Crows’ attacks, relaying their defence along the slopes. Lambs, already too old to frollick, bleat from juncus-heavy marshy meadows. Linnets sing where Swallows swoosh. A Kestrel carries a dangling mouse toward the abandoned, half-tumbled farm.
But it’s the Cuckoo’s call that pulls – from wood to meadow to hill, along the ale-brown beck trickling between the cleavage of the moor, dropping in swirls and cataracts beneath oak and rowen, and still-bare ash on the south-facing, sunnier side. Untickled trout in dappled pebbly pools, sway in the flow of moor-cold water. Young heather blushes on the breast of the hill – coloured like Burgundy in the bottle, and bilberry fresh green and rushing to ripen, too-young fruit just showing. Out here, up high, where summer is short, Green hairstreak butterflies mate and lay, keeping low even in the sun.
Now the bubble of Curlew song ripples down the summer’s noon and, as if in plaintive answer, Golden plover call from the high tops where Grouse sit awaiting their fate.
And the Cuckoo continues to haunt – its echo mocking along the crease of the valley, flowing, following back to the woods where warbler and thrush duet in the now-warm day.
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Reminds me of the late Henry Williamson.
