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Dave Borthwick@borthwickdave.bsky.social |
406 followers 243 following 484 posts
Lecturer in Environmental Literature at the University of Glasgow's School of Social & Environmental Sustainability: ecopoetry, walking, place - environmental humanities
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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causeway & corepaths along the east coast - young kestrel who summoned themselves visible by calling, linnets lit red & hard at work along fencelines, a classroom of guillemots lines up to learn the wind
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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deep in dunes grasses parse byelaws from 1979 (weather's astute erasures), viper's bugloss leans neon in rain & over your shoulder gannets bear south on rising tide
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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bright & uncertain a skylark sings in (offshore a mast rises, a seashaded thorn, & a single gannet pauses afloat after their dive)
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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thunderstorm offshore you walk it out between woods & crashing echoes breaking on the beach
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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two timezones, only one regular: tide rises & falls as the table predicts, dial of rinsing showers at least stays visible in indigo of horizon & rolls around - seas stipple & sizzle until you lose sound of waves as freshwater roars on your hood
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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wild night & the gusting, watching lights onshore & off (the steady & the wavering), a short night but a long time until dawn
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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set down for evening with squalls distant gannets banking & an eider near shore on rising tide
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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july 2nd unsummer cool though warmrunnel of river is temperate jungle of midge & cleg - hawthorn berries already in long ripen (corvids look on, plugged in to that world of theirs you skirt)
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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it is windless & cool, hawthorn spins out tendrils of razorwire
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& the surprise as you hear lapwing calls alongside those of swifts - not 1 but a pair strutting & pausing in halflight (you find marsh valerian [you think] & oak apple galls, a flightless crow hopping around in thin cover) -
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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thank you
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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coming back you feel observed & 2 fields over find deer & youngster in stressed monitor mode
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& dusk at the river inverted horizon marking time trees' inverted colour spills fry plop & 3 swifts skim voicelessly through skyplankton
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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thank you
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& all afternoon young blackbird's two-note subsong, then low-key winterdinking, perching & gaping, you place hopes & encouragements about which they have no idea
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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small river, 6 miles higher up from where it passes you - before the long drop it has worked on since the ice left - same summer musk of suspended leaflitter holding mayflies over the surface, more rowan here than alder, banks tighter on the bends
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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1st thing, sky cracks & light seeps
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& the squally winds turn leaves over, rub the wrong way, dark enough light sensitive lamps notice & flare against debris - a small hare sits in a still runkle, tasting sweet tops of grass in recovery
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& plumbline of lastlight resisting grey shutter of allnight dusk 1st of the meadowsweet clenching & starting to fizz
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& young roe deer on the longroad, zigzagging indecisively, you pause & wait until they leap at viable solution
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& blue of evening moons of sowthistle (time of dry & hastily stacked hay), dogrose petals in the burn & 1 group of cattle bugling another as they move from each side towards the same fenceline
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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you waver to moon, atmosphere rendering it colour of the same red sandstone of fields below
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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almost midnight you waver between turning in & waiting for the moon - stars are working through & loud sheep for morning shearing will make for unsettled night anyway - tawny owls call & pipistrelles flit (this is morning of sorts, in a different timezone), you waver
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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'I wonder now... whether there might be something in the old superstition that certain ailments of the spirit & of the body are particularly likely to beset us under the sign of the Dog Star' (W.G. Sebald)
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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in cool focus is default
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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July not laziness for me just any temperature close to 20°c sends brain offline - am addled * have to concentrate on concentrating
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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writing a piece about winter productivity just now - personally more productive opposite cycle to you, acknowledge this is rare. I need July rather than December off.
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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lunch watching a ringed plover walk mewling in circles in unfortunate choice of patch (you find the clutch among visitor throng, nothing to be done - point out, move on) - offshore an island's only inhabitants make use of that provided
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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long coastal hedgeline with whitethroat scratching - eye caught by yellowtail moth caterpillar gliding along - hanging nightshade & speckled wood on the same stretch
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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up west, buffet & rising tide - dusk without sunset, an aching light & sound of the sea expanding as light recedes
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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good solstice to you, folks, if that's your thing
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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whatever algorithm or dis-coincidence rarely see your work pop up now & it ails me (especially news of movements of slaters on the bridge).
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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please forgive for dissonance but while a celebration is needed this, from @ninamaclaughlin, hits it for me *from *Summer Solstice: an Essay*
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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rest day & at the coast land peters out in haze (a polygraph optical illusion), sea thrift & lapwings in it, a fastfalling tide
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& open the door to rinsing rain & a visitor sheltering on the doorstep
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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loud crackling from the same verge announces a badger who by some circumstance never registers you are there
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& humid, air thick with pollen & insects (a rainbow buffers & fades, afterglow makes mountainranges other side of the Solway), as light goes find meadow vetchling & micromoths hanging white as seedheads
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& late into afterglow everything distant & close - dark at your fingers & in the hills, moon at your back & in wallowed ruts of tractorwheels
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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another day of silver & graphite (skylarks lost in pewter, their voices intact), rinsing rain that deeply stipples water - between showers a reed bunting finds reason to sing
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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afternoon on a section of plantation's river, thunderstorm bellying over the hill & seeping colour, sandpiper bobbing unconcerned & willow warbler & yellowhammer adjusting volume against rumbling peals
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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there is a hare in this image, flateared in their form, an alert amber eye if you find it
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& a thin line of corvids feel the tree calling them in to fill its canopy with dark, a small moon stands high between pylons, brightening
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& 13 June, an evening to hunker it out
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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insect-heavy & cool, sun blazes low with no heat in it (nimbused by thin cloud), sky high & sealoch deep, moon still as its own reflection
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& a newly-fledged pied wagtail appears & pecks grit - a parent is on the roof, piping instruction
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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an entrance left alone 2 seasons shields its gate, wishes to be forgotten this close to solstice, allowed to give safe passage only to that which will do so softly
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& sunset through mottled cloud, ubiquitous pied wagtail bobs & retreats (smell of cut haylage, warmth of heifers' breath as they press by a gate), lesser blackbacks are silent in afterglow, pacing around, deciding something about such night as will come
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& rolling showers, faint rainbows seachlight in gaps between - evening of ripples on the mercury pool in the woods, brief sunlight on dogrose - a buzzard rises up from the black ridge & keens, banks towards a break in cloud
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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great islands of cloud pass between sun & land on which drifting shadows move slowly time of bogcotton skylarks loud & so high they are hidden by grey hidden in blue
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Dave Borthwick
@borthwickdave.bsky.social
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& gone midnight the denim basin of light that will fade until it deepens at 4am & spills at 5
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