Lecturer in Environmental Literature at the University of Glasgow's School of Social & Environmental Sustainability: ecopoetry, walking, place - environmental humanities
Dave Borthwick
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fragment John Burnside, 'Taxonomy', The Light Trap (2002), p. 6. the neighbour's in-by, sky SW darkening with rain
coastal. on heath, common blue & spotted flycatcher. lunch on rocks interrupted as the shingle shifts animate & trots towards us, calling in warning: ringed plover has nest or young & moves us successfully on. 1/2 #birds
& over the road all day - where lines loop above a field of dips & rises - a silaging team was chased by a promise of rain that by gloaming had not arrived - a 2nd cut in, then, & a park empty as an echo
& torrential rain - in heavy canopy at fieldedge (you must take this on trust) housemartins weaving short stitches in & out of insect-plankton interior (loud calls beebeep-prrp wash uphill) - the silver birch shining by evening, & the sparrowfolk nipping out in easements to hunt & retreat
& glower & rinse in cycles, ditches & burns running quickly & high (start of feathermolt), 1 little grebe has a tufted trailer of little (little) grebes
whitethroats in searadish & climbing to cliff 3 red kites over silaging inland. below on accessless ribs of stone: 4 razorbills, 2 guillemots. 2/2 #birds
& the little grebes are back on eggs - for the 3rd time without success. sun through alder dapples on a cracked & abandoned slurry trailor. the waterllies you thought blackened - native or not - flower.
& why the jackdaws focus on the field burned herbicide ochre? what nourishment is there in the dessicated & dead?
& all afternoon the sky drags itself heavy & sullen (all the farm dogs bark at peals of thunder & are drowned out then by the next sheet of falling metal) forked lightning in peripheral vision as you go & the plantation reeks of moisture a dream of being aflame
