Bog Myrtle & Peat

Home, Parish of Kirkgunzeon – 10/4/20

Down along the water where the air is smoked with pollen and dusted soil. Every willow branch is rank with queen bumblebees, and each one moans like a resurgent lawnmower until the land is fairly dinning.

Walk a little way through the myrtle beds; watch the stems flicker and twitch at every step, churning out gales of green, silky pollen. Those funny buds have lain scentless and discreet for the winter, but now there is a smell of myrtle again; a crushed, spoony tartness in the warmth.

During the course of a single warm night’s comfortable breeze, the entire glen was filled with willow warblers. What a difference it makes to have that southerly wind nudging them in our direction, and it’s a fine thought to lie in bed and imagine a million small birds pouring across the straits of Gibraltar in the darkness –  then scooped up from Spain and flushed across France, they come at last to Galloway and the songs they sing reveal nothing of the work it has taken them to get here.

Yesterday’s singleton has become today’s uncountable mote. And in spider-hunting and the sifting of small gleanings, the dial clicks another turn towards the inevitable.