This morning the air brings a rather disconcerting scent of fish, a pale blue and pink sunrise shades the sky and a bird I cannot name sounds in the distance.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a close up of a caterpillar. I say it is two photos side by side, one showing a close up of a caterpillar, and one showing a close up of a section of discarded shoelace which resembles a caterpillar. No elephant hawk moth caterpillars have been observed this year in my garden, and I am rather hoping they have been quietly going about their business in the fuchsia bush without me noticing them. I don’t want to think that there haven’t been any. My camera reel shows me that late September is about latest that I have seen them so I guess for this year I shall resign myself to the fact there will be no new sightings. The shoelace photo still makes me chuckle, and I think in the year I took it I began expecting to see the caterpillars every time I went out for a walk because the one in the front garden was visible most days making slow progress in the fuchsia as well as exploring the lawn nearby. The bush is now super huge, as if it wants to take over the whole corner of the garden, so perhaps it serves as the ultimate hiding place for all manner of creatures.
I recently found my first conker of the season during a stroll in someone else’s town, and I brought it home to place by the front door. Perhaps it is true that the scent that they emit whilst drying is a deterrent for large spiders, perhaps I have just set myself a reassuring ritual for each autumn. Feeling its smoothness reminded me that I had written a poem about a conker so I was eager to rummage through my poetry files to find it and see if I thought it was any good on a reread. I do rather like it, and it was fun to receive some positive feedback about it when I shared it on social media and then in a writing workshop. And my thanks to a person from Australia in the workshop who asked me what a conker was, and therefore reminded me that my thought about taking one with me would have been a good idea after all. Sometimes I overthink things and talk myself out of them whilst wondering if people will think I am silly or childish for taking a conker or my special glass marble to a poetry workshop. And actually those are the things that run through the core of me and make me me… I will take this as the perfect reminder to pop such things in my workshop bag in the future.
Good friends are a wonderful reminder of what’s in the core of you. People who really see you and know you, and I felt my soul become as shiny as that conker during the week when I went for minty tea with a lovely friend. Mix that in with shenanigans in a zoom room and a night out at the theatre to see Susan Calman and my soul felt super zingy.
There’s a romantic nostalgia that has been rising in me these last few weeks and music and sunset drives, as well as all those good conversations and laughter have been asking me to notice the change of season, and how I am standing in it. As a gentle nod to this I have decorated the fireplace with autumnal things. I am motivated to dust things properly when there is going to be a new arrangement, and I have loved seeing the simple display of ‘things’ that signifies I am observing the tilt of the earth. I have even been heard to say that I am going to make the mantelpiece seasonal every month.
Here’s to friends, to candles that can be lit in the darker evenings, and to remembering that licking conkers is not a good idea.
Conker
You slip out smooth;
your emergence perfect gloss.
You are Autumn
seemingly solid as wood.
I pocket you,
roll you between finger and thumb.
Palm you
as my lucky charm.
Yet there is a hint of death in you.
And a tree.
I am holding you still as I walk.
Daring myself to lick my fingers
for the taste of you.
