In the morning, each leaf wears an edge of rime and the jewelry of almost-frozen rain. A fox, the same colour, nosed through them last night, sniffing their beery tannin, hungry for a trace of voles where worms slip deeper underground.
This morning is one of frost and fog. Hawthorn, damson, ash, for the first time this year, have a gauntness; they are winter trees now. Flying wood pigeons disappear silently; distant traffic growl merges with the muted banter of blackbirds and robins; a peregrine on radar ghosts above.
The oaks, free of foliage clutter, begin a kind of afterlife, darkly. Their leaves are tickets dumped at summer’s destination, receipts for the life that came from light. Now they wait for the return journey, to a subterranean realm where darkness turns death back into life.
An oak leaf in the midst of the nitrogen cycle .... the official "flower" of The Oyster Months.
No comments:
Post a Comment