The Wood

A dark reluctant morning, the wood heavy with summer's remains. The croak of a jay.

A buzzard spots me before I see it and discreetly glides to a branch further away, but the pigeons are not so quiet, their wings gobbling in alarm. 

In the breeze, a single sycamore leaf rubs against another like a squeaky pub sign.  

A honking skein of geese over the nearby stubble field, fresh ploughed. The dog dashes off, doing her own noticing.

I smell dew and heaviness and things stirring more slowly than I can tell.

Now I have got to the quiet part of the wood time seems to have stood still. But not quite: there's distant traffic, for here in Midlothian we are never far from new roads and houses, marching across the landscape like some unconquerable army. But the wood, for now at least, is inviolate.

I've come to the woods to look, and listen, and touch, and breathe the clean air, and feel grounded. For this is the time to consolidate, to hibernate, to plan. 

There's a river running through the wood: we go down to where the current has piled rusty leaves against semi-submerged rocks, as if hoarding in these stone banks can provide some insurance against the storms to come. 

What's that? I pick it up. A woodcock feather, its stippled brown pattern almost like a leaf itself. I would never have noticed it if I hadn't been paying attention. 

I put it in my pocket to take home.