To Hear the Fish Sing

I’m down at the water’s edge

Where the current laps the muddy shore

Filling the animal tracks with liquid silver.

The morning sun rides the willow,

Casting lemon light through fingers

Of mist creeping home to shadow.

Time is on the turn, past and present

Weaving through wormholes

Among the alders and dogwood

Like filtered light through a barn door.

The skylark sings above and the river

As it glides over stone heads, worn smooth

And mute now in the bubble and chatter

Of the river bed where ochre stains soft

Their once sacred presence.

I crouch like a timid creature to listen;

A primeval man, senses sharp as flint

The pulse of the earth awakening

To my ears, the stirrings of bees in the meadow,

Spying the green-legged moorhen skulking,

Flowers greeting the sun: but the river ever

Recites its incantation, its spell forever

Breathing life to the land.

Then I yield to its rhythm

Sense its flow and rush,

Its poetry and wish song:

Then I stoop to hear the fish sing.

An Ancient Place. (Minninglow)

I stalk the moth-wing silence like a wraith

Shadowing the footfalls of creatures

That passed this way

A life-time ago.

I investigate snapped twigs

And prints by muddy pools;

I wait for echoes to revisit

Like salmon searching upstream.

I run fingertips over rough hewn stones

For hidden runes, for sacred carvings

And pictures of the past.

I stand atop a cairn and whisper questions

To the haunted landscape,

But in return I hear only riddles.

I sense a strange breeze on my face

The silken and leathery leaves

On the gnarled and stunted beeches

Chatter and curse in ancient tongue.

There are tombs here, slabs of twisted

Limestone, crushed by time and embedded

Into the hill like doorways to a dark realm.

Shadows are caught and held firm

Sacrificed to nameless gods

Given to earth and the sanctity of silence.

I see the hare upon the hill

Divining the destiny of the landscape

And the lamented cries of skylarks and lapwings

Beyond the green pasture.

I flee this place of omens and portents

Of singing stars and raging moons,

Yet I am strangely loath

To leave this realm of fleeting shades

And return to the hum of reality.

John Lees' Barclay James Harvest - 'North' Album Preview

Skirr Cottage Diary.

Reading Roger 'Deakin's Notes from Walnut Farm'. He is one of my favourite nature writers. He is so close to the earth especially trees. His knowledge of trees and pollarding and coppicing is inspiring. He just loved wood. The book is so inspiring in fact that I spent the morning pruning shrubs in the garden, until the rain came, then it was in the workshop sanding down a lovely chair of ash, one of Roger’s favourite trees.

Skirr Cottage Diary.

Strange goings on up on the conservatory roof. As I sat reading - Henry Williamson - in the conservatory I kept hearing strange scratching noises above the light on the outside of the roof. Couldn't figure it out. Then I spotted what looked like a small furry animal scuttling along one of the ribs on the roof. I thought it was a mouse but could not understand how on earth it got up there. On closer inspection I found myself peering up at a bat. It had obviously been attracted to the moths that in turn had been attracted to the light which shone up through the roof at this point. They must have also settled on the roof and the bat, probably a pipistrelle, was picking them off. A strange an unexpected sight but a wonderful one - I feel sure Henry would have appreciated it!

Harrier Rally in Goyt Valley near Buxton.

Many thanks to Chris Packham.
Photo by Buxton Advertiser.

Harrier Rally, Goyt Valley near Buxton.

 A visit to Goyt Valley near Buxton to the Harrier Rally with speakers such as Chris Packham and Mark Cocker, proved very worth while and its great that such high profile people are willing take part in such an important enterprise. Well done them! There was a good turnout and the weather was good to us. We must now keep up the momentum on the powers at be – local government, police, the Government – and stress that it is not just bird lovers up in arms, but this persecution is totally illegal and must be stamped out and the perpetrators arrested as law-breakers and criminals. There is nothing mysterious about the mainly male hen harriers disappearing from nest sites – they have either been shot, poisoned or trapped.

On a brighter note a friend and I took the opportunity to walk down the valley after the successful rally and did some flower, bird and butterfly spotting. The bird population is rather quiet at this time of year but even so we spotted a buzzard, a sparrowhawk and several kestrels as well as a family of stonechats, a calling willow warbler and meadow pipits; I was hoping for short-eared owl but it still eludes me. We spotted up to three tall orchids, and with the help of some other ‘flower people’ decided they could be either northern or southern marsh orchids. We also found some wonderful patches of bog asphodel by the road and drifts of blue harebells. The many thistles well in flower attracted many types of butterfly including dark green fritillary, small tortoiseshell, painted lady and meadow brown. An unidentified dragonfly was also spotted possibly a common darter.