It registers in all the senses, the change within the days.
The hedgerows ripening through equinox, the yellowing of leaves,
give notice of the sun’s waning.
Trees will dispense with foliage and put their faith in their roots.
Living things forage, with increased intensity, in the reserves of the soil or the moon-pulled tides.
Forests are dusted with the spore-burst of toadstools. Among epigeous bodies
newly arrived woodcocks interrogate the facts of the leaf mulch.
The jay redoubles her understorey errands: the acquisition of acorns.
The chiff-chaff examines closely the wisps of wild clematis,
his voice is muted, but his heart enlarged: it must drive each wind-beating wingbeat.
On Channel facing shores
the softer light flattens out against the coast, stretches seaward,
interrupted by the passage routes of birds; the ever homeless, restless.
A young osprey drifts aloft on its maiden voyage south,
to prospect the fish-rich, frostless tributaries of Senegal.
Anticipating their point of departure, whinchats and warblers take a last repast.
Swallows cluster chittering to perches: pilgrims to a warmer sun.
An autumnal fluence in the wind conjures new arrivals, in the hedges and wood edge.
Thrushes, starlings and finches, their ingress invisible by night,
spirited in through the shipping regions: South Utsira, Fisher, Humber, Thames.
Loose flocks of lapwings, swirl ink dipped towards these lowlands,
and elegant godwits have settled among the scrapes,
taking their first rest, since shouldering the crosswinds from Iceland to Cromarty.
A formation of ducks, bank and hesitate, approaching the gravel pit,
then collectively, descend, whiffling.
Their silhouettes reform on water, as a raft of wigeon, with turmeric stained foreheads,
and as if with curiosity, whistling, alert at this new location.
They all have crossed, above the North Sea swell,
tracking magnetic flyways, star-spun beacons, and the topography of smell.
Until landfall, their bodies were their only fuel.
Sea-born squalls build momentum and direct their energies to shore.
This ness of shingle, hunkers down between the flanking dunes,
as a brown hare presses to the ground, to wait out an approaching storm.
Copyright Leo Homewood 2022