More and more often, I make lists, write poems, take notes as I walk, of all the things I will miss when I leave this place. We have reasons for moving on, but there are so many reasons to stay. The reasons are things that don’t belong to me, don’t care about me at all, but it’s enough to know they are there and to see them from time to time.
I mean the birds and animals I see around the September house or hear in the quiet of the night, the evening and the early morning: roe deer, hares, foxes, red squirrels, hedgehogs, coypus, polecats, martens, little owls, barn owls, tawny owls, a pair of elanion blanc, red kites, buzzards, sparrowhawks, kestrels, and today, a hobby. And Theresa the toad who lives in the sage bush. Where else will I find so much magic?
September thoughts
In the first part of the night,
when the moon was light, the sky aglow,
whisper-wind sweet and low, a hare sat
beneath the dark hedge, in the dark grass
where the deer pass. And I saw
the pulse of the ancient law of the life stream,
the heart that beats, blood-bright and clear,
in hare and deer. I heard it in the silent flight
of the owl, the slight, slender pad of the fox,
answering the trailing wail of the vixen’s call,
and I wished to hold it all in my cupped hands,
enfold it in embroidered bands of eternity.
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