wild chords of geese

somewhere mellow between

the end of the overblown blackberries

and

the start of the harvested leaves

fused flies

on clinical sills

hint at bleached sun

and

in the hedges

thistle winds to come


to eyes trained on histrionic heights

of Welsh adolescence,

this stubborn serenity,

these mediaeval colours

are

endlessly reassuring:

a great grey blanket billowing unbroken from the North Pole

wild chords of geese in its folds;

the flinty, dependable noun

behind mists of adjectives




Note: these pink-footed geese come over the North Pole to our low lying coasts every October to find a mild winter and fill Norfolk skies with their wild music. I've been trying to make a decent sound recording free of wind and other ambience (always some farm machinery growelling and peeping) for over ten years. Might have managed it yesterday in the still snowscape. Got an incidental visual record almost by accident. I wonder what they're saying to each other. 'Wild goose chase, this. It's like the bloody arctic. We might as well have stayed there. That poet's recording us miles from home in the dusk again. Nutter.'