September

Scotland is entering its twilight months. Like an old ragged bear she is creeping into the darkness to go to sleep. Year on year it's the same: the once familiar places that were filled with children's laughter and the brightness of summer take on new shapes and turn somehow different. All that was known becomes a little stranger. It's still September, and there is length to the evenings, but come early November and the return of the mists, days are sometimes barely lit at all. I love this place, this strange and wonderful land, because it's a perfect cave for the imagination.


ENOUGH

Out of the scurry of the days
A place of late sunlight, and the sky
Swimming into blue unclouded;
The trees held in a bonfire of the last sun.

Enough to wait here by the wood's edge
And let the things still hurrying to be done
Fall silent, as the first stars
Vague the orange of the far-off west.


(From the collection Coracle, published in London by SPCK).