Bog Myrtle & Peat

I lie with my newborn son in the room where an old shepherd died. Light and night pass over the window; gulls ride out to sea.

This was the shepherd’s room for ninety years before we came to lie in it. How that time must’ve flown for him in a rush of business; he was a man of action and sound judgement, matching his labour to weather and chance. When he woke in the morning, the window showed him everything he’d need for the day’s work ahead. At first light, he’d know if it would be dry enough to clip sheep, or if the day would heat too much for a gather. For him, the hills were less of a view and more like a bulletin.

But slack water pooled around him in his dying days. He was sick and he suffered in his lameness. Hours slipped and his work fell undone, but I’m sure he continued to gather news from the window regardless, piling it uselessly in a list of missed opportunities. I’m sure he saw the day’s opportunity in every slant of atmospheric pressure, long after the hills had begun to move without him.

Now I lie in the same room with a child so unready for the world that his view from that window is meaningless. It could rain or blare down bright sunshine; my boy will bide indoors regardless because he is soft and the sky seems to baffle him. So he sleeps across my shoulder and his twitchy fingers pluck the unmarked hours.

Today brought a grand, beckoning view of hills which begged my son to come and see. But life does not begin or end with a single moment. There’s a warming and a cooling to endure, and it seems you have to wait before you can start, just as you’ll wait to finish.