The houses in front of my garden are up to their gutters in mounds of topsoil –

an optical illusion: lights glow behind drawn blinds. And, out of the soil,

another new house is growing. It was flat as foundations, then a glimpse of brick.

Now its lower storey is bolting. Every night I come home to a different view.

Oak trees, roofs, an obscured church, and the street light that shines on my shed,

making it look as if someone is living inside, move closer together in the dusk.

Rats that fled the field when it was cleared, have tunnelled under next-door’s fence.

A field vole, popped up from his newly-dug hole, freezes when our eyes meet.

The fox that thumped my wall in the night to plunder a birds’ nest, is trotting

down the twittens with empty jaws. Blackbirds cease hopping; starlings

fall silent; pigeons squeeze together in the crook of a bough – then,

larger than you’d expect, two deer appear through dark rain. They leap.