Waiting for Frost

Autumn is running late and the summer landscape has grown tired without the mercy of a frost to send it to sleep. The foreground is pocked by the rusted heads of teasels, scratched with dried grass, dusty with the heads of thistles gone to seed. Bullace hang blue-black like dried blood spatters on the coppergreen bush. Unnamed plants grow in unkempt lines, one on top of another, following the bones of fields and the sinews of old lodes,their tired tops translucent against the evening light, like tatters of painted paper laid in ragged overlaps. The mist rises from the drowning, a golden blanket to trick the tired sun into sleep so that the cunning fen can come alive, screeching and squealing, yapping and creaking in the dark. The moon soon stands clear among its stars, casting my long, weak shadow over the crawling fog. Underneath the secret, waterlogged land heaves and writhes, closing lodes like muddy, swallowing lips and opening others like gashes in the secret re-arranging of the night.