14 October 2007

Tropare, to find out rhymes. Trope, to turn. To turn a poem. Trite, worn smooth. The corn separated from the stalk. Culled and chosen. Hit on. Picked out. Well then. Today there are many picked out entities, items, as we walk through the wood along the south side of the Blyth estuary, because it is October, when things are tumbled from the ruck, from the collection which is poured out of the sack. The things which are still holding themselves together, which have been turned over and are clinched. On this dry day they roll and glitter. It gives them a polish. As Hopkins would say, the inscapes grip.

It is warm enough not to need a coat. Green pelted strips of mud emerge between glassy reflections where the inverted trees of the far bank are printed and fixed. Hundreds of redshank look pale, flash white, blink vermilion, crowded far off under the banks, on the opposite margin, or venture onto the mud, stepping down with a flap, then stooping and beginning to probe. A few stand tall and are godwit. Curlew call and one crosses the foreground, every speckle on its plumage fired in place. It opens the whole length of its thin bill, a careful crack, and lets out a sound which is too small to be a call, no more than a remark.

An acorn and its cup. The thin rim of ...