Country Roads
The snow-heavy skies have gone, replaced by a sodden grey blanket of cloud. A watery sun teases. Birds carol: a Song Thrush stutters and starts from the churchyard beech; and a Great Tit chants ‘teacher’ ‘teacher’ from the hedge, by the old school. Somewhere a Blackbird sings ...
sunny days tease the blackbird into song
In the lane Buzzard sit motionless atop drunken telegraph poles - Roman Eagles. While a Kestrel watches from the wires. And further down the lane woodpeckers drum ...
poles apart woodpecker telegraph each other
A robin flits in and out of the hedge as we pass. In the hedge bottom the first primrose among the moss ...
primroses in the hedgerow bank a robin’s nest
Counting crows - seven in all - musical notes, between the staves; telegraph posts winding up the hill to the old fort. I think of a song ...
Telegraph Road - Dire Straits
A whim, which has nothing to do with birds or Spring just a great piece of music; a bit of fun. Enjoy!
Artist Notes
The featured picture by Rowland Hilder is from an original watercolour ‘Spring in the Dales’. It’s a painting of early spring with the trees just beginning to come into leaf yet there still snow on the distant hills.
You can read more about Rowland Hilder in his brief biography here.
‘Spring in Dales’ is superb. Thank you for putting up that picture. And the haiku about woodpeckers telegraphing each other is lovely.
Thank you it is quite lovely isn’t it. Rowland Hilder is one of my all time favourite landscape painters and I have a number of his prints (can’t afford his originals which cost loadsa money!) hanging around the house.
It was the woodpeckers that prompted the post. There were two drumming away in reply to each other both perched on telegraph poles. It just made me chuckle.
I love your impressions and haikus all chirping to one another
Thanks Jane! This was a fun little post to write. I’m glad you liked it.
Normally my posts are heavily edited (even over-edited) but I just went with the flow on this one – just the way my brain is wired!
Beautiful, particularly love “poles apart woodpecker telegraph each other”, they were busy in our wood yesterday too. We have a private joke that great tits sound like they are sawing wood, leading to comments such as “oh, he’s building himself a new garden shed again”, etc. And thanks for the musical memory, that track always reminds me so potentently of driving in the dark along the narrow country lanes of S Oxfordshire, past signs such as “Christmas Common”, oh, a very long time ago…guitar goosebumps!
Thanks Helen! Yes the woodpeckers were fun. The repetitive phrasing of the song of the Song Thrush was described by Percy Edwards as ‘Sweetheart’ Sweetheart’ but I always hear it as Cherry B’ ‘Cherry B’. I love your imagery of a Great Tit building a new garden shed – next time I hear one I’ll ask him to give me a hand! I think I first heard Telegraph Road or it may have been Sultans of Swing at the tail end of Summer in 1980 when I was working away from home in Leeds. Musical memories …
There’s such a great atmosphere built up from your prose and poetry Clive, a landscape filled with birds doing their thing.
Thanks Andrea! I just sort of went with the flow. But yes I think it works and I kinda like it.
[…] This late-winter hokku was composed by Clive Bennett and can be found here. […]
Beautiful post, Clive. Here’s a country road in southern KY, USA.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/140386565@N02/50481150683/in/photolist-2jPWq6U-2kt7sZZ-2jPEyUe-2jUR6mX-2jpvu59
Thanks very much for the transplant into the Hokku Garden!
A beautiful road and what I think is a Meadow Lark (?) singing. Is this nearby to where you live – it’s very lovely
Yes, that is a meadowlark…good ear! This spot is about 2 miles west of my house. I go there often to enjoy the birdsongs.