Nights by firelight and owl song
March 14, 2021

Moving On

These are the days of swan nests and duck eggs, but the call of a lone swan circling overhead, perhaps captures more precisely the tensions we feel moving through the seasons. 
The seasonal shifts in the activity of the swans and ducks are becoming increasingly visible reflecting the wider patterns of movement. Boats leaving and others moving in. Everything is in a state of transition; we are all in a state of transition.    

Journal entry:

“13th March, Saturday.

Sitting here in the well deck, at the messy edge of late winter in the silence before dawn, the world feels as blank as the year, but everywhere is full of life to come that will occur in summer.
 The life still unborn,
        the bees, dragon flies, 
             the gnats that will dance above the waters.

And then there will be the ducks that I will meet
          who will perplex me with their behaviour.

And the loosestrife flare
         and dandelion globe,
                the shimmer of light through silver birch leaves that are yet unformed.

The smell of rain on hot pavements
          the nettle flower I will see
                   and the millions I will miss. 

Do swallows darting across African skies, as I sit here, 
 dream of English summers as I do?”         

General Details

In the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org.

Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.

All other audio recorded on site. 

Contact
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I would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com