September sunshine

This September for a moment is as bright as this April
skies are blue, the sun is shining, the trees are still green  
but now the green is an old green of leaves aged by a summer of rainy days
and there and here, a hint of summers colour shows instead of green. 
The rowan berry’s are turned red, the hawthorn’s too 
As we walk the paths - rich ripe blackberries call us to pluck them 
The perfect sky is empty of the swifts, a few young swallows gather on the telephone wires
Waiting for that moment to set off.
Peacocks and Red admirals flutter at my window?
After a silence, the Robins begin to sing again, carving out new territories.
This equinox is day of Indian summer, a vagrant warmth in the Sun    

   
The last shavings of the grass fields for winter feed has left the tops looking a patchwork
The lapwings and curlews have left those high fields now 
Now the meadow pipits and stonechat hunt the last of the insects
There is an elegiac feel to these last few days of summer light,  
a time when the mist hangs in the valley in the morning and the spiders
hang in their jewelled traps,  diamonds  hang  in the air 
An elegy for a world we once knew, a world where we had control 
now we face a winter of challenge finally aware that we are partners 
in the common destiny of our planet not the master.

Northumberland

 

Silver Sand beneath my feet, held by grey Marram grass
Blue Hare Bells, purple clovers and yellow daisies
in two great crests of dunes as you approach the sea 
The sand is gilded by the seawater,  
A broad ribbon of gold that leads from the southern harbour
to the northern bays
Here and there low black rocks, full of pools 
Slippery with bladder wrack, cut the golden sand like runes
Above me rises the great Castle of Bamburgh,  
far to the south the cracked teeth of Dustanborough
to the north the castle of Lindisfarne
and a half mile  south is a broken eggshell of a pillbox 
A precious land to be so fortified 
Now the defences ring to the sound of the sea birds 
Swirling high the terns screech 
The gulls call the wildness from the harebell blue sky
Out on the wild sea a white star of a gannet, 
the roman nosed Eider, cuddys ducks, bounce in the surf 
hurtling over the sand so light of foot till she turns, 
our Kaya, one of many happy dogs running 
where Oswald and Aidan walked, 
where Norse raiders drew up their boats
Now a place of peace, gentle colours rest the eye
Silver, gold, warm stones, a blue of blue in the sky,  
The rich warm colours of the Turnstone,  
the wintry shades of the early Sanderlings
This is worth defending, this is worth keeping