For dverse.

• 

First day of August is Lugh’s day, harvest day, the day of festivities and games in honour of Lugh’s foster mother, of Puck fairs, wild goats and bilberries. Balanced between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox it marks the high point of summer, the gathering of the crops, the slide into cooler weather, when plenty gives hope of surviving the winter.

The wheat was harvested here weeks ago and the hay. Crops ripen and the next is sown with little help from nature, and Lugh turns away from those who think they know better. I picked the first blackberries, a gift, but gifts are meagre in these days of plenty, and who listens to the growling of the sky?

summer scarce begun
ill-used by storm winds
the first leaves fall