north wall · deep soffit · swallows, two pairs
always the coolest run of the building's edge. moss does not quite get going here, but the slates wear a thin dark wash of weather and the underboarding of the eave has been painted four times in living memory, never the same blue-grey twice. the wall behind never feels the sun. you can rest your hand against it in august and still feel that it is older than you are.
swallows nest here, two pairs, on the upturn where soffit meets wall. they choose the north because in heat the south becomes an oven. the mud is brought up in three hundred and twenty-something journeys per nest, give or take; nobody who has counted will say. once the chicks are out the parents line the rim with one feather each, white side up, and the rim looks then like a small chipped saucer left in the dark.
an old nest from a previous year hangs a little further along, broken at the lip; nothing returns to it but the wind. the porch is around the corner. the milkman pauses under the eave when it rains, and the dog learned in a single winter that this was a place to wait.
field-note · north first week of october, the nests fall silent. by the second they are empty. the mud holds through one more winter, then collapses in a single night you sleep through.