short stories
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The Nature of Flight
Being fully awake and with the soft magic of the half-light dissolved like mist, I stare in slack mouthed silence as squirrels hurriedly ripple across my path, their spines undulating like waves along a skipping rope. They have become startled by the rooks alighting in the great oak tree. Rooks have a more discerning scent and lead a flock of starlings to an area rich in food. They have a more delicate feel in their beaks enabling them to detect food from a greater distance so have formed a beneficial relationship with the starlings, the rooks also acting as a ‘look out’ for predators on open ground which can be readily observed.
In the Parlance of Time
A storm had gathered during the night with torrential rain, the lightning illuminating the clouds. Through closed eyelids, the on off of the lightning gave a near continuous picture followed with snake-like wriggles spilling and tumbling in a couple-coloured sky. In the parlance of time, I had longed for scenes like this, as I in childhood sweetly slept, full of thoughts unborn. By mid-morning the storm had ceased, and the sun began to split the clouds, I could hear the rustle of the wind in the trees close by and the land with rain was now rinsed. As I followed the sounds everything was descending earthwards, leaves, twigs and acorns, across the cedrous bank the old mossed cottage trees were bent with apples, their fragrance and ripeness filled to the core.
Moses’ Call to adventure
How privileged I felt watching him, he snuffled as he suckled, letting go of his mother’s teat momentarily and whimpered as he sought to regain it, I knew then that he was the one.
Several weeks later he left his mother and siblings from the dimly lit barn and came to a bright and happy home. He settled in quickly and in no time at all had formed a strong inseparable bond with Maverick. Moses quickly became a curious and playful ginger kitten, always ready to explore the world around him.
OCTOBER- the season of Acorns, Cobnuts and Conkers
With the autumn sun now at a lower angle in the sky, Maverick and I lead our longer shadows over harvest fields now ploughed and forsaken. The sky began to break like an ice cap, where cracks in the laden clouds widen to crevices of weightless blue. All around the leaves of the hazel amongst the hedgerows took on the golden-green of spring in the beams of the low autumn sun.
Once upon a Dream
In the windless noon, the flaunt of the sunshine on this sultry day and the cirrus clouds above help to absorb the moment’s meaning. As I observe the sights and soundscapes, I gaze across the daisied meadow watching the motionless eye-winking cattle basking in the sun.
AUGUST – The Mute Season
It is now early August, the lanes and the woods are silent, without the pellucid sound of birds singing. Only the yellowhammers in the hedgerows are with song. In the skies above the cries of the buzzards can be heard. This is the time when birds begin their summer moult to replace their suit of feathers ready for the harshness of winter.
Our Distant and Day Long Rambles
Beneath the flailed clippings of a hawthorn hedge is the home of Fidget and her little friend Piccolo. This is the place where Bob and his trusty spaniel Blue would frequent every morning, a little lane which winds like loose string baffling your sense of direction.
a little bit of heaven on earth
The wind and rain was raw and mean and would change but for a moment. It would touch your face as soft as a feather, and then all of a sudden the cold would hit you once again, for when nature’s birthing spring, she gets right down to it.
One Moonlit Night
Through a little gate at the bottom of the garden is a buttercup meadow, where a fox I named Finbar often frequented. He was aware of my presence as I felt his stare, but knowing my scent had no fear of me. I watched as he stretched out his length in the sunshine, I could see his long ears and his elliptical eyes. I named him Finbar, for a name makes a difference, be it a person or an animal, don’t deal with them as strangers.
A Lovely Dawn
The sun was streaking the dawn sky pink and mauve, with the perfect light catching the dew on the ears of whiskered barley. With a pair of watching eyes, I marvelled at the majestic flight and mesmeric sound of the seagulls as they rose into the sun, clipping the misty air. As Maverick and I ambled along the narrow lane, I began to reflect on how I had enjoyed the ariel display of the swifts screaming eagerly for the sunset and their mystical star games when we last visited this place.
A Show of Summer Softness
In a small enclave of a wooded copse is a place so delightful and yet so often goes unnoticed and unsung. Here is a place to see wonders great and small; it is the little puzzles and magical ploys it presents to us, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered where no eyes can follow
The Three Little Flies
Ping, Pong and Poo were three little flies.
But only Poo was wise.
They were siblings, full of cheer,
Always buzzing, far and near.
Let The Moments Linger
A youthful looking man with a look of intelligence and sensibility approaches me, “Why bother” he bristles, “Why tell your stories, no-one will listen? This is what you should be talking about, this is what people want”. He thrust his phone into my vision with images of space and science fiction; “This is the future” he said. This came as a thunderbolt to me and I listen intensely to what he has to say.