Lockdown diary #3: You are never parted in the beating of your heart…

As is so often the case, the body was in virtually flawless condition: the only clue as to its demise the dull eye (ordinarily… extra-ordinarily brilliant yet pale with cheeky inquisitiveness and intelligence) hanging loosely from its socket – seemingly beseeching me for help that could never come. Even two days later – when no-one, no-thing, had been to claim it: neither fox nor magpie; buzzard nor kite – it remained impeccably embalmed in its lignite sheen: and so I carefully gathered it from the verge – the weight in my hand remarkable for its lightness (as if the departure of its life-spark or soul had rendered it hollow) – and laid it carefully in its temporary resting place. Normally, we would have buried it in a quiet spot in the garden. But times are not normal: so I swaddled it, instead – muttering a few thoughts of ritual respect and regret… – in a large workaday carrier bag; and then placed it, heartbreakingly, in our green council compost bin.

Lockdown diary #2: Spare your arithmetic, never count the turns…

And then – suddenly; startlingly; steadfastly… – it is Sunday. The chilling, seemingly fixed north-north-easterly – ferrying in yet one more ferocious (but not this time vacuous) official foreboding of its own, in the form of a frigid wind-speed alert… – seemingly purifying the pavement of all pedestrians. All the silver/grey/black cars, however, immune to its volitions, are stationary: as they still – thankfully – remain locked to their owners’ homes – many warmed with the rainbows and soft toys that demonstrate love, hope, and temporary happiness. [Andrà tutto bene. “All will be fine.” (We wish. Fervently.)]

The cooling breeze – the cooling day – it brings is concretely cleaner; and, as I circumambulate the churchyard (the building at its heart now closed even to such prayer), I launch my atheist’s supplication quietly upstream: craving continuing clarity, and everlasting expanded green spaces to breathe within. At the exact instant I traverse the main, southern entrance, the air resonates with the midday chimes. I feel blessed. Perhaps this presages something. But… – and I hesitate…. Benevolent… or… the other kind…?

I choose the former; and ramble onwards.

A long December…

It may be down to the fact that I’m listening to – no: immersed in – Counting Crows a lot, at the moment (a very extended moment that has been absorbing me for many, many days): but there seems to be a preternaturally large number of black birds flecking, piercing, spiralling, twisting and weaving the air, at the moment. (That phrase again.)

What air’s from home…

Sometimes – and sometimes more fittingly than we may care to observe… – Mother Nature schedules her tasks and happenings more fruitfully and frequently (and therefore with much more granularity) than simply the succession of seasons obvious to even the most imperceptive of eyes. Waking late, yesterday morning, my habitual appraisal of the front garden, and the youngish oak which stands sentinel over it, revealed a large selection of cleanly-broken twigs on the green verges beneath, scattered by the recent sharp winds (harbingers, it seems, of yet more of Winter’s cold, unforgiving, grasp; and its reluctance to depart – despite Spring puncturing the jackstrawn turf with the tiny xanthous blooms of narcissus and primrose; and the local finches’ songs, above, swelling with Summer warmth…).