Wild Moment: Matt Barrett
Turning South
Night bike alone
the usual loop
never the same twice
Last time wraith
of an owl glimpsed
in the lamp's beam,
this time, after stupidly
neutral 'winter'
I was confused
by the inverse motion,
bike one way,
pool of light on the underside
of splayed Sitka
the other.
I twigged: dusk dew
on oddly lush grass
now hard lenses
below zero.
At last a frost
coy in March.
Toiling over lumpy bog
from the gate on the moor
you suddenly see Glasgow.
The black strip of
hills after dark
didn't say bye.
They didn't say anything.
They're hills.
I turned my back
on home
to head home.
Turning South (again)
The usual loop
now dusk’s at 8.
Rowan and Sitka sag
under 7 days of rain
‘Summer’s’ last gift,
a trick that saw us slip
blindly washed
over September’s lip.
The nights don’t “fairly draw in”.
Instead the endless day
unfairly
gets bored of the north
and like a marriage
that’s lost its bliss,
it drifts
away.
Tonight’s break
in the clouds
is frankly too late.
As I splatter through
the dimming gap
between black trees
I feel cheated
by autumn’s creep,
the not-so slow slide
into winter sleep.
Then -
as though they knew,
a little bat dipped,
hardly more
than a strobing flit,
into my lamp-lit line.
A minute later, a hare
loped from so close
I could see its fear
and said sorry out loud.
I want to hide with them
away from the trail,
drugged by winter’s draught
dreaming in the dense dark
of moonless December.
Just past the gate on the moor
in a sky-clearing squall,
I thought I heard
the sighing of larch
but it was in fact
Glasgow’s transatlantic
flight path.
I can’t dodge
The Mud Season, lightless
Springtime of sorts,
so freewheel through rushes
in the nearly-night
and hope for snow.