Moon: full, harvest
Venus: morning star, bright the hour before dawn below Castor & Pollux, twin stars in the constellation Gemini
Big acorns are falling from the big oak
Wild pony mares graze with leggy colts 4 or 5 months old. Are they pregnant again?
The yearling fallow deer boys are getting their first velvety antler nubs
Blackberries are through, I should have gathered more
Rosehips are redder than red, hawthorns too, I run my hands through them while walking
I fantasize about stealing some of the neighbor’s apples in the dark in the long manor house orchard; they have so many falling to waste
Are they swallows I saw hunting bugs in the meadow on the hill after a rain, here so late in the season?
Cows are being grazed on the hillfort monument where we walk. They are just now somewhere nosing around in the eldritch places under ash trees. I like the bronze age burials there, but sometimes I get spooked when the light is odd or low. Cows on them feel like seeing St. Brigid look at me from through the mound, who was nursed by a white otherworld cow with red ears. They put the cows up there every year this time, a neighbor (not the apple neighbor) with his dog says. Careful, he says, they sometimes head-butt if they are protecting calves.
1. Vixen Leads
I went up the moor early to find the morning star.
This was two weeks ago almost exactly, around the dark moon. I knew it would be clear that morning and I wanted to see the star fully. I also wanted to move outside my own vision for a little while, to get a bigger view beyond the part of me that had been sitting for days too close to texts and words and wound-up thoughts. I wanted to look for wild ponies, to check how big the foals were, in the place I saw them pregnant and then with hours-old babes in spring.