The owls were sated. Full of moles and torn up scraps of suede-skinned voles. Plucked from the ground in the dead of night by the white-winged warrior with the gift of flight. They didn’t hear the approach of death for the owl can murder with…

The snow was mostly gone. But it lingered in the tramlines where tractors had trodden two months earlier. Then the ground was sticky and the tyres left what, from this distance, looked like the parallel prints of a finger painting. We followed one of the…

Molecule by molecule the mountain is dismantled by the soft but irresistible rain. The beech tree has snagged a scrap of night in its boughs and is holding it hostage to the day. Black wool on a wire fence stirred by the wind but unable…

The tree tops are immersed in molten copper. Cast with the the horizontal rays of a dying sun. But the death of day breathes life into the night. And the blue black shadows, born short and shy in the seconds after midday, rush ever faster…

Scary creatures stalk wood, field and heath. Fox and badger with fearsome teeth. Death and destruction wherever they pry. Henhouse, sheepfold, pond and sty. All is happening while the farmer’s asleep. Rounding up flocks of imaginary sheep. And by the time he awakens when the…

The lovers laid on the drier ground in the middle of the copse. Face to face. Hand in hand. Two thin lines drawn so close together that from any distance they’d have appeared as one brush stroke on the canvas of their special field. There…

There are no trees in Orchard Ride Nor apples ripe at autumn tide Save for those in cellophane From Tesco, Waitrose or some such name. No roots, no trunks nor grass between No insects, bugs or things unseen Just bricks and blocks and glass and…

The church clock strikes midnight. Each chime counting out the old year and ringing in the new. But it’s the sounds in between the bell that are our celebration. One…The hoot of an owl borne aloft on white wings. Two…The unoiled gate that squeaks as…