seasons – Page 30 – don't confuse the narrator

time passes

2:00 am
Crickets creak a tripwire grid
across the garden.

4:00 am
The hoot of an owl glides like a shadow
from the heart of the tallest pine.

5:30 am
The rooster’s crowing wakens the hens
who peck and pick, unravelling
the fraying edges of the night.

6:00 am
Now, all the valley dogs are worrying
at the straggling ends of dark; they tug
and bark and run with them towards the morning.

(A draft – or perhaps just notes for a poem – which is very much a variation on a theme. I posted an earlier interpretation almost exactly two years ago as Alarm)

Incidentally, trying to find out what type of owl I was writing about, I found the Owl Pages site with its extensive selection of recordings. And having cross-referenced with the Iberia Nature site, I think I must be thinking of a tawny owl.

harvest

I’ve mentioned before that there’s an old guy who keeps cerdos on the plot of land alongside the olivar. Just two pigs, each year: one for each of his daughters. I’ve started taking the windfalls across for them when I walk down to the village.

When the guy isn’t there, I leave the bag by the chair where he sits each day, morning and evening, watching the pigs get fat. Sometimes one of the other viejos del pueblo joins him and they put the world to rights while the old burro grazes patiently, tethered to an olive tree.
Continue reading “harvest”

the fruits of the earth

While each grape dreams a dream
of champagne-bubble destiny, figs
turn to honey on the branch. Pumpkins swell,
and melons hoard up sunshine, sprawled
voluptuous on their beds of straw.

There was just enough blue sky to take the photo this morning – yes, figs do sometimes grow vertically upwards, and although they look less appetising, the honey-brown ones that are beginning to wrinkle are the sweetest. The clouds are gathering again, though, so the poor melons and pumpkins are more likely to be ‘bathing voluptuous’ in fields all around the Valle del Tiétar within an hour or so.

“just one more”

It’s 4 a.m. and you stand on the lawn,
knees slightly bent, head back, facing
infinity, scanning for meteors. Come on;
it’s time for bed, I Zebedee, but you beg,
Just one more. And so I watch you
watching for falling stars, diamond scatter
from the Milky Way, and think of the tip-tilt,
star-gazey hare in the moon. There! look!
You point skywards, but the pointing finger
roots me firmly to the earth. Come on,
I say, but you are galaxies away, determined
to wait for Just one more.

It’s that time of year again: time for the Perseids, which I saw for the first time lying in Battersea Park two day’s after I had my wisdom teeth out. Although I was with a couple of radio hams who assured me they were ‘meteor scatter’, even some thirty years later I still wish when I see a shooting star.

the green, green grass of home

Since I’ve lived in Spain, one of the joys of visiting the UK has been the glorious green of the countryside. This picture was taken yesterday from the top of Brecon Cathedral tower.