Winter shrub

bundles of smoky topaz twigs and a few small leaves heavy with rain

Post-vet-visit: I wash the cat-piss off my arms, and keep talking to him, as he slinks out the door.

Chickweed grows through the discarded bricks: ochre, burnt umber, cracked and crumbling. They glow in the dusk.

A magpie drags a crushed up, squashed up, squirrel carcass across the tarmac, leaving a fresh-blood red smear. A green woodpecker flies up from the side of the road.

I comb the grass looking for the missing bolt from the lawn-mower. Each wet blade catches the light, and the rake chinks against mud-clothed stones. 

Picking plump wild strawberries in the rain

The crowd rushes into the road to meet the torchbearer.

A clutch of daisies in the woods. The bluebells are already wilting.

Woodpecker: a smudge of green against a darker-green hedge

A thin band of light between the sea and the grey sky. The dawn is softly golden.

The bands of colour on the cliff fade from ochre to white, sandstone to chalk. I think of Rothko, sideways.

All lit up like summer. A  few Leicester Longwool. Ivory dreadlocks in a fern-green field. 

Roshi (we still call him a kitten, even though he is pretty much fully grown) burrows into the ripped, silver, wrapping paper on the bed.

Lavender sky and the buildings fade to shades of grey.

the frost like mottled mould - white on the dark winter green lawns

The golden Buddha glows. Outside the occasional car rushes past.

The grid like lights of the petrol-station forecourt. Strips of neon and fluorescence. The scent of chemicals. 

In Argos, I apologise for not knowing where to go. The sales assistant runs through her spiel, they can protect my new toaster for three years...

We are assaulted by bright plastic curves and waves of sound from the afternoon shoppers.

In the pool of light from the door of the bar, they cup their hands around cigarettes, trying to light them in the wind.

a flock of leaves

A crescent of spilt dark coffee on a white saucer, the crumbled edge of a digestive biscuit, and the clink of a tea-spoon meeting the edge of the cup.

On wind stripped branches, a single red-brown oak leaf, curled up like a robin's breast. 

In the centre of the path -
a bag of dog shit

6:30 am. The double frost slashes and cracks over the windscreen.

In the shadows the ground stays hard and white

Friday 13th

Mathias Svensson smiles over his chinrest, then grins, breaking out into a hot jazz solo in the midst of "Swing 42"

Dusk. A plane scores a salmon pink line across a puce and lavender sky.

Three clouds stacked up on top of each other. Hints of grey in their bodies. Glowing white edges and broken wisps of light. They drift across the sky, crossing puffed up contrails. The sky is the palest of blues.

Dawn comes as a few strokes of paint - shade of grey, an edge of pink, orange. 

- half crushed pine cones, dusted with dry earth.

Ways of seeing trees 3

Is a laurel a tree? This one has been cut into a square. Its round fat leaves spill out of the box’s straight edges.

At night, clusters of torch red berries on the rowan tree shine like glass baubles in the light from the window. 

In the grey winter light

everything loses its depth

only the wet things are interesting

drops of water on rosebay willow herb

pools of silver rain in the potholed road

the damp earth we tear up with the wheelchair’s tires

Winter sun. The shadows of naked hawthorn trees stretch across a freshly ploughed field. A single crow hunts for worms.

Ways of seeing trees 2

Middle distance. A sea-grey conifer. A globe of upward reaching branches. The wind disturbs them.

A flash of white fur just beyond the fence. And again. And again.

Ways of seeing trees

The trees on the ridge are barely moving. Ink black and bare - I could believe they were drawn there.

Late afternoon

Late afternoon. 15 miles away rain curls down from timberwolf grey clouds. Underneath the sky is golden.

Driving home, I saw a pheasant coloured horse's mane, behind a dark green hedge.