Winding back at dusk

A road, fields rising to small hills;
fields falling to a river and to woods;

rain oftener than not; a curlew fills
the silence with his single word,
the soft land drinks it in.

Indifferent cattle browse, crows
blow like black plastic, flop and bounce
in search of pickings-ones and twos,
harsh callers, rags and bones,
all hard nosed scavengers.

Mud-booted, following water under trees,
we watch a grey and yellow
feathered wagtail please
itself, drifting in the flow
of small ephemera, feeding.

Winding back at dusk, the windscreen
catches clouds no bigger than
my fist: starlings between
life and sleeping. They are gone
with one turn of the wheel.