Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Aurum drifts from an avenue of beech: we scuff up fibrous coinage, walking the riverbank path. Two hounds bound into the clear brook and out, sniff stumped trees, scrabble claws on flood-smoothed granite. It's good magic at Golitha Falls. We breathe it: the scent of clear river, green fern, tree bark, wet rock, fresh leaf fall. Otters live here: we will not see them, we know, we must imagine it: Dog and Fat Beagle make too much splash. We love the road signs seen on approach: Caution Otters crossing. Tree roots bump the path, mossed green: can be mistaken with delighting ease; serpents; dragon tails; giants' fingers: emerging like stories, irrepressible, earth-nourished. I think of Midas: how wrong he was, turning everything to gold with indiscriminate touch. Autumn is the wiser alchemist, truly rich. Two hounds bound: scatter fulvous treasures. Before home, coffee appears in a shining flask cap.

In between the word-blurs there are moments where I am surprised to find myself not typing or holding a biro or stooped over an open notebook. And now, while I am typing, I am thinking of them. There was Little Granddaughter sat on the edge of the moor, bathed in ice cream, legs wetted from adventures in the leat. She has a new game: one of us says 'Wait a minute…' and taps a finger against lips in thoughtful pose. She sprawls limp in laughter. There was the river raid made by me and Dog, across the Tamar to Devon to scrump a few blackberries. They were all to seed, so we came back to our own bursting hedges. There was that hungry stare into the fridge, the reassurance of congested shelves. I made a jam sandwich, brewed fresh coffee. There was the oddity tonight of arriving home to find lights flickering: a mystery solved by the discovery of a TV remote under a Fat Beagle. In short, back to the word-blur I may go: we are laughing, walking, eati

That first walk out, all gauze and swaddle; hedge webs are things spun from mist; blackberries bend stems, dew-rinsed, delicious. Flowers on the bramble bloom; last year's magic strawberry patch, though frugal, is not absent petals. Slowly the hazy cover slips; clouds keep the sky barely modest. Meals are taken at the indoor table, the windows open full stretch. An afternoon coffee is left on the sill. Two figures in the garden take washing from the rotary line, throw pegs into a pot, hasty and wet. Rain starts sparse, swells to downpour.

Chandeliers spilt; a morning sparkle; an air of morning after, of drunkenly flung. Spider-webs' irregular geometry strings the hedges, celebratory. It is a feast of fruit fatted flies for them, a larder of sugar buzz wasps; wrapped parcels hang from diamond lines. Abundant autumn, busy, glutted. Through silk-sticky marvels walk home, squinting in the lit up mist. A feast of toast for us. The jam was over-boiled, it spoons out like sweets, rounded and night-coloured.

I did write this in the car, and managed (first attempt at such technological advancement) to email it, from my phone, as a draft blog post, which I have not edited because I like the free tumble of tired words: Poor eyes all hollow and shaded like the horse of sleep has landed a double back kick. Horse of sleep? Perhaps I was thinking of a nightmare? Tired? Oh yes. In the car, typing on my phone, when I get home sleep is the next listed task. Lovely travels even with this weary nag. Enough equine reference now it all is like a laundry basket, when all the colours are chucked in, and one thinks of how this was worn for that and all is jolly, never mind the mess. I was not thinking of a nightmare, only a mulish stubbornness. Kick off day clothes, clean your face, lower eyelids, hush now mule, dreams are waiting for you.   Sent from my LG Mobile

Fleet of foot, the fox slips over the brow of the hill road; body dark, eyes lit: a photographic negative. Boy misses it but we are in good time for his early bus. He heads for London with a coach of arty students, two cheese sandwiches and a camera. (Return time: roughly midnight.) The house is quiet, bar the thump of Dog's tail. Sleep is not calling. There is leftover coffee in a silver flask. From the porch steps I see the sky lighten, the early cloud drift, the tree silhouettes still leafed, like dark lace; the oak reminds me of a Spanish shawl, a widow's dress. -Imagine a widow in this breaking dawn light: the sun rising on such a different life. Birds are piping shrill; traffic on the A30 flows, a constant churn. The steps are cold: I have on a woollen coat, and flip-flops. -All over the world, such changes are happening: seasons and circumstances. History seems a clumsy lurch: if we get to hold hands awhile, that is grace in a clumsy world. Good to

A slice of grey matter in the sky; the moon; flung up, pancake style, round as a bubble with no wobble, so confident in flux: full with it. Tired, not exhausted, driving, full-beams dredging hedges, a small catch of wild eye reflections, all along the tree tunnel the moon is flickered off and on, the tree tunnel: edged in gold leaf.