An exclusive extract from Matthew Shaw’s upcoming prose poetic / photographical ode to the annual cycle of seasons — with an accompanying track written and performed by Shaw and Mark Fry.

Ideas flow through channels, transmitting through forms, through day and through night.

A tower of light, corridors of hours, small and secret thoughts. Skyline bower, a weathered retreat a doorway of hope.

Beyond houses and history into legend and myth. From stone and brick buildings to moss and feathered heath. With no reprise or concessions. Into darkness now, shot through with flashing light, changing doors locks and keys, silver bark fingers, root planted feet, lit spine trunk, breathing life giver.

Close to the source beyond the earthly realms, landscapes forming through ruined castle walls. Aperture of soft fog light, decocted grand rhyme machine, surrendered spaces, time lapse. Friends looking out onto a familiar scene, from profane to sacred and back again.

Beneath the hills by the secret garden, through the haze of the misty morning, the sun cuts through illuminating and wakes me gently Ruminating through the woods into the inner light, out of timeless shadows towards every dawn.

Temple of light in planted lines, circular journey along the same straight path, the law of perplexing returns, hiding within plain sight. 

Legends of clean landscaping, the centre of purpose overlooked by passers by.

Long straight track leading to whatever is beyond. Younger guardians of older souls. 

Mountainous horizon over clear blue sea, millions of mineral pieces gently underfoot, on the edge of the elements, moving boundaries, changing priorities

Two lovers look across the generations of time, there is a secret hidden in a box, in a fortress, surrounded by a moat. The day will come for the spark to catch light in the darkness, full of love, sealed with hope.

Captured through another lens, escaping memories and aspects invisible and apparent, known and unknown, liked and otherwise, secret, hidden and public.

Quayside contemplation on a winter afternoon, bright shining reflecting broken waves, vanishing songs of sirens, flight in sight of silence.

Stillness.

Winter sun dancing in between clouds. Sky reflected in shallow pools, abandoned footsteps washed from time, temporary traces of humanity.

Dazzled by the transience of a single moment.

Tidal becoming and going, clay pipe animated wanderings, pictures drawn in sand erased and redrawn.

Footsteps are just impressions, what is permanence anyway.

As the world disappears all forms dissolve, ghost ship sails, walk toward nothingness, lost within cloud.

A ghostly retreat, a body made of Oak, In the winter darkness.

How many feet across the years walked upon these old stone steps. An imprinted memory at the edge of sight, built from fine welsh stone. How many souls did aspire above, up to the top and the panorama.

The river winds like a silver snake the hills unfold and communicate.

Hidden depths in earthen womb, from inner earth to windswept hill, by oceans, waves and coastal path. Where rivers meet and merge, water trickles through grooves in stone, forever flowing onwards. Fresh water mixing with saline, sailing thoughts and memories like leaves on a soft breeze, forever changing dancing and grinning.

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‘River Song’ will be released digitally on 4 September.

‘Atmosphere of Mona’ will be published on 1 September by Annwyn House. Pre-order a copy here (£9.99).