I put my body in the loch and knew no more about it afterwards than its temperature. Two swans circled and didn’t care. I carried home the skin of an orange, wet knickers, the noise of goats in the far field the shriek of myself in the water. This false summer is riven with itself: the hawk hovers, seconds away from the kill. However close, he is only hunting mice, only taking life away amongst the green. I go into the woods, updraft clots into being like cream: I wake up good. — ALICE TARBUCK
Alice Tarbuck is an award-winning poet and writer. She has taught Creative Writing at the University of Dundee, and is a 2019 Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Awardee for poetry. Her debut non-fiction book A Spell in the Wild: a year (and six centuries) of Magic is published by Hodder & Stoughton.