Day 713 of the Daily Poems. It is indeed November; our poet Barbara Hickson describes a misty evening on the farm, recalling the Scottish poet Nan Shepherd (1893-1981)
November
When the mist thickens, one walks in a blind world (Nan Shepherd)
Evening clings to windows, calling him to shrug
into coat and boots, settle the coals, leave his hearth,
follow sheep-scent, the old-man cough of cattle.
He navigates by hidden landmarks: a trickle of water,
stone walls crouching in gloom, trees ghosting
as distance diminishes, fog closing in
seeping into his senses so he’s on the brink of knowing
and not knowing —
years gathering behind him like leaves in a corner.
Through mist, white noise of a silenced voice —
a bargain struck between man and horse,
the grind of metal on stone, foot and hoof heavy with clay —
lives gone from memory but, sometimes, in the margins
of the day, glimpsed briefly, like the owl’s pale wings,
felt in the steady beat of their passing.
Barbara Hickson
published: Creative Countryside issue 5, Autumn 2018, and in
my own pamphlet ‘Only the Shining Hours’ Maytree Press, 2024