New-ploughed fields of clayey fertile earth, the colour of Dairy Milk held too long in a three-year-old's steamy paw. Barley stubble, spiky scratchy and the bright light-bending gold of a green-throated tanager's back. Everywhere are glossy rooks, elegantly dishevelled, jackdaws, suavely greying, and black-headed gulls, their not-black heads not black now.
The heavens are quietly quick with a billion primaries pulsing south. The gulls gather behind the plough.
Nature teaches us about the circularity of life, of the inevitability of things happening again. The wheat and barley will be gold in summer, and the poplar leaves will rustle even if the air seems quite still; in autumn clouds of gulls will follow the plough; in spring the leaves will appear from bare soil as if by magic again.
Jules Pretty
The Earth Only Endures
No comments:
Post a Comment