A misty morning. Damp spider's threads catching my face. Lucky and Nutty searching for the last of the walnuts. A lone crane rising from the river as we approached, hopefully on her way to winter in Africa.
 

Cold this morning. Winter is coming. Lots of birds on the move. A raucous gathering of rooks across the river. Hopefully not settling, as they take rookeries out with shotguns here. More as I drove, darting up and down in bunches to their road kill. Then a buzzard, gliding across from one side and then back again, her head tilts backwards as if to say the day looks good, or just to wonder why I have chosen not to fly.

 

Frost has visited. Wandered over the open spaces crisping grass and decked jewels on brambles by breathing over hedge tops. Shunned the sheltered spaces. Yet to call where sentinel oaks protect the ground life with their skirts. Stayed clear of trees gathered in gossip groups whispering the summer away in their falling leaves.

 

Wet. Falling all night. Ground softened, leaf litter squelchy underfoot. Trees drop gobs of water as the wind gusts. Weighted with rain, limbs hang low, leaking ochre onto the woodland floor.

 

Leaves unsquelched but not yet dry. Rains of yesternight sucked into the soil. But not enough to more than soften cracks of three dry months.

 

A symphony of falling leaves, brushing branch mates as they tumble in a gentle timpani. On the outer foliage, the early sun turns ice to water and drops in a drumming counterpoint.

 

In just one day, all ash in sight have loosed their leaves, as if Gaia had whispered to them all at once.  Verdant green carpets for a night or two.  Last leaves hang like wizened fingers waiting for their little death.  The trees prepare to bow their heads and sleep.

 

Rough concrete, hard tile, shining steel, wet pavement, drizzling rain, red poppy.

 

Blood red poppy on my lapel; other lapels, some with, some not.  For remembrance.  For those who lost their lives: soldier and civilian; physical and mental; friend and foe; innocent and guilty.  To be able to choose to wear a poppy, or to not . . .

 

The bombs don’t fall on me
The bombs don’t fall on me
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The bombs don’t fall on me

 

My daddy is a worker
He works so very hard
Bringing home the bacon
And sweeping up the yard

 

The bombs don’t fall on me
The bombs don’t fall on me
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The bombs don’t fall on me

 

My daddy is so good
In every piece he makes
Clean and neat and perfect
And mummy’s baking cakes

 

The bombs don’t fall on us
The bombs don’t fall on us
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The bombs don’t fall on us

 

My daddy makes good money
Building shells and bangers
Shiny, bright and wholesome
Hope that none are clangers

 

The shells don’t land near me
The shells don’t land near me
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The shells don’t land near me

 

He sells them to the world
And makes a tidy sum
He buys me toys and sweets
A trumpet and a drum

 

The shells don’t land near us
The shells don’t land near us
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The shells don’t land near us

 

He makes mines and mortars
Sells to foreign countries
Who use them up so fast
They are weapon junkies

 

The mines don’t blow me up
The mines don’t blow me up
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The mines don’t blow me up

 

They sell them on again
With no moral onus
Every side has our stuff
Daddy gets a bonus

 

The bombs don’t fall on us
The bombs don’t fall on us
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The bombs don’t fall on us

 

My daddy is a wonder
He loves us all you see
Keeps us safe as houses
My mum and dad and me

 

The bombs don’t fall on me
The bombs don’t fall on me
Sing, hip, hip, hip, hooray
The bombs don’t fall on me

 

Grand baby, almost walking. Rain bouncing, multi-focused faces. Fewer office uniforms, more colour. Fewer solitary travellers, more generations. Fewer phones, more emotion.

 

Home.  Damp.  Browns.  Earth and tree and leaf.  Sand and russet hanging on to splendour, greens spotted dark, umber darkening to mud.  All fading to a thousand shades of darker.  Once crisp leaves bend instead of breaking, curling into the terrain or dangling on limbs already fallen from their trees.

 

Unlike last night’s all night moon, the sun is hiding, leaving a light that’s pale, flat, and feeble.  Pools that hint of darkness gather under trees and the line between light and shade is smeared as thin as fairy footsteps from trunk to clouded sky.

 

Dewdrop balanced on a blade of grass.  Holds life, this bead of life’s lifeblood.  Life suspended within it.  Day will warm it, shrink it and at the last will tip it down to feed the thirst of life that’s waiting in the soil.

 

Grey sky, still air, mild even in the semi-darkness that precedes sunrise, dull.  Soundless silence.  Feet on damp leaves don’t register.  No bird flaps into the air, no animal scuffles in the undergrowth.  Snug in leaf lined burrow and duck feathered nest they wait.

 

Drear and dismal hang about the wings.  Dew, damp, drip and drizzle sit astride the stage, less a colossus than a blanket sucking dryness out.  Nettles bent low with the weight of autumn, feed summer nutrient to winter store, their last leaves brushed with wet.  Fallen reminders of trees’ great glory curl into comfort cups for wanderers.  Blades of grass hoard their green, turn water into shining pearls.

 

Air scrubbed by heavier rain lets the wintering sun begin to burn away the clouds and glint in twig end droplets.  Grass polished to a living green.  Washed stones show off their multi-colours.  Leaves that were a general rotting mass, now rinsed, become distinct, clear edged, each with a not quite finished story.

 

Brother sun, morning lazy, eyes peering under hoods; crawls from bed whilst clinging tight to a coverlet of hazy clouds.  Sister moon hangs high to watch the struggle.  Half chewed from a long night sipping starlight and catching comets in the corner of her eye.

 

Wind turning, gusting, spitting rain.  Leads yellow fronds of weeping willows in a merry dance.  Whips tops of poplars back and forth, painting golden smudges across the sky with their last leaves.  Old oaks stand by, more inclined to break than bend; happier to shed a limb they’ve cherished for a hundred years than bow their heads to anything that’s merely air.

 

Dull grey, damp.  Then the leaves.  Fallen, once crisp, dry and fragile; then flaccid, wet and rotting.  Now, as if an extra, long lost dimension had been revealed, they are lifted each on each.  Colours bright and sharp despite the flatness of the light, oil painted deep for their glorious last hurrah.

 

Leaves stolen by Autumn reveal the bones that held them.  Tight packed, straight, tall, unbranched waving a flurried topknot to the light.  Old trees birthed in clearings turn and twist to fill the space.  One sings in the slightest breeze, two trunks intertwined, their branches bows to each other’s cellos.

 

A bridge between the worlds of dark and light, dawn lacks the vocal range of gloaming, dusk and twilight.  Moment by moment light reinforces light as another day arises.  Sun is cloaked by curve of earth but light is bent and bounced from air and cloud, reflected and refracted to the road ahead.

 

Grind on gravel rasping stone on stone.  Swish with a whisper over still standing grass.  Under protective trees crunch leaves that just hold shape.  Squash spongy vegetation that has begun to rot.  Pull against the suck and gloop of muddy earth.

 

Summer’s slow soft languid stream has risen.  What smoothly slid by banks of earth on bed of stones now sounds itself upon the world.  What barely bumbled stumbles to a dim rumble over rock.  Power crumbles with mumbled ripples into a smooth silence broken only by a bird that swoops to drink upon the wing.

 

Translucent camouflage trails across the world.  Densest in trees obscuring detail, disguising at least one reality.  Opening as we move, closing behind, insulating a bubble that is now.  Future, past and the roads we did not travel veiled from us.

 

Lazy Sunday silence mutes three sets of feet.  Nutty running, bouncing, dancing with oddly muffled paws; Lucky’s older, slower, softer; and mine aging own.  A gurgle from the river.  A stir of air that whispers in the last leaves and rouses heavy drops to splat into the world.

 

Chill.  Dry, windless chill.  Rising sun has left its heat behind.  Penetrating cold that slides between the leaves and broken twigs huddled on the ground.  Seeks out each gap and imperceptibly slips between the cells to settle in that layer of flesh that rests against the bone.

 

Bright.  Sharp light, deep shadow hide gradation.  Still shaded space holds hardness in yesterday’s hoof print.  Newly lit grass sparkles with frost, offers leaves made crisp with cold.  Leaves cocooned by branches grasp at life’s last texture.  Bright light defrosts, leaves leaves damp, glistening, softening.

 

As if desperate for oil, the crane’s clockwork gears rasp throatily.  Head, stretched fantasy thin rises on a snake like neck and looks around.  Legs stretch, wings appear and spread, lift into the light.  Circle once about, soar high, flame painted by the low-slung sun.  Before departing, a second circuit glancing down at we pitiable ground locked things.