ANOTHER QUIET PLACE, GREEN:

As the blacktop snakes between the fields, following the rolling
contours of a landscape I was once desperate to escape, another
elephant gets off me. This is the place I come to in my head when
I want to slow down, abandoning myself to the rhythm of verdant
hedgerows exploding with new shoots & the fabulous cacophony of
summer weeds. I straighten out on the patchwork beats of lazy
fields. Chuckle under breath at comedic brutalist straw. Box
sculptures waiting dumb-faced-naked for collection. Close cropped
pastures crave the teeth of underpaid milkers. The homes of
foresters & back woods people I imagine myself to be, hide at
the ends of uninviting gravel avenues. The scent of Oak, Pine,
hawthorn, elderberry & brier. Reverb-ed birds call from branches
filtering dappled sunlight, high above cool paths cut through
indigenous sandstone festooned with bare root & the dance of
vibrant fern. The steam whistle of a train ricochets up the valley.
Down below us a river, imagining it’s self concealed, idles in the
shade of willow over-hang. Breath exhales deep, low & clean.
Time slows, stops, goes backwards & I forget…

(K)