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Dave Borthwick

@borthwickdave.bsky.social

4.3K followers 870 following 1.2K posts

Lecturer in Environmental Literature at the University of Glasgow's School of Social & Environmental Sustainability: ecopoetry, walking, place - environmental humanities

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 20h

& you find fullmoon eventually - cowl of cloud streaming off - slanting fast into dark

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 20h

was eh, 1 room up from Dan, once nodded you, shared a punt April 96, have cosy book-length poem idea where death is just context. interest?

Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 20h

but you do not accept unsolicited MS... you in on this, Lewis?

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 21h

& the longroad open in exhale of water, SW clear & in want of stars - but NE & E a rug of cloud, fullmoon slight & partial (perhaps visible later & higher), you chase 2 grown lambs back through broken wire

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 1d

& the moon (1 night from full) climbs out & into cloudbank, autumn skies do slow dusk drama (shotguns are rapping, all knuckle on bartop) & rubbery engines of pheasants: there is a thrush decaying to pixels & a heron you mistake for a kite; guns pause, tawny owls open up

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 2d

thank you for yr courage. Go. Fucking. You.

Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 2d

& the river smells of the hills this early-autumn sunday time a shift is building this acorn mast year scattered where stormfloods flattened a bed dipper in shallow rapids ducks & dives with confidence

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 4d

please can I explore the site a little & get back to you?

Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 4d

we're all fine, thank you - we got off lightly compared to those higher up

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 4d

thank you

Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 4d

& stuttering bands of rain & wind - in breaks sound of chainsaws - glint of cars beetling over brash, bird neighbours glean wreckage (chaffinch, dunnock, house sparrow) #birds

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 4d

lovely vocals too

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 4d

& late afternoon the storm swept in, shotblast rain & buffeting, shoulderbarge wind (roadsides piled with torn timber an hour in, river topping & windows collaged with soft shrapnel of leaflitter)

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 5d

& then coming back a workglove ripples - underneath a half-asleep toad bucks again & settles & you cover them over & leave them to it (night of warm & howling wind & wires singing, of small hare that bounces in your headlight, of sough & whoosh of rusting branches)

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 6d

they are, to quote a friend, 'motherless bairns' - no behavioural education or guidance. There is nothing positive to say about it all.

Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 6d

& october elbows in with dreich slouch, rim of the quarry a dryedge of scab & the usual hornbeam ablaze, the hill pushed back & acorns split by wheels in the lane - jackdaws figuring roost & pheasants glaiketly wandering, uneducated, unsure, lost

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 7d

& last of September, maize being harvested over the river - 1st year they have sown it there - take it in as it pours of rain, back at nightfall to squelch & skid, bare khaki of land

Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 8d

@thehoursgodsends.bsky.social

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 8d

michaelmas & light is suddenly vital - 30 mins of it will seep through a crack in the year this week as autumn deepens - no arclights or yard-drench of LED yet, just tiny intensities of bright (the moon's keel cuts a shine above), the sky silvered as scar tissue, all begins to wane

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 9d

& dusk a slow-going blast but behind you it is already dark below the tops, a stitch of pink footed geese headed coastal, an appraising 4x4 slowing to see what's for sale, the smell of fox piss

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 12d

1st thing, jackdawclatter sunrise

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 12d

& snagged in the wires, still free, the new moon is body & apparition

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 13d

& dusk of thin infrastructure - the primitivity of poles of wood hard against seasons, the taught promise of power & comms, the stick that brought you this, a fibre

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 13d

Go You Nicola!

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 13d

😕