Bog Myrtle & Peat

Home, Parish of Kirkgunzeon – 18/5/20

Rain came at last, and the tin sheds sang loud and well into the night. I was up before dawn to find pearls of water running below the gatebars and the washing line, slung in the reeds and combed into the coats of cows and prowly cats.

Day came in a surly bend, with a heron welting on the burnside and a loudness of larks on the dyke-tops and the moss where ancient glaciers dumped big stones for birds to stand upon on mornings like these. Larks loved the newly fallen rain, and cuckoos like wood-wind in the half-light, smelling of blossom and the great un-dry.

Morning showed larks lurking in the oat field, and rooks and crows beside them; larks walked in the new crop, laying their eggs and steaming them towards life; larks hung in the last of the rain and there was little else to hear above that dear-loved din which has come to lie between dawn and the dying edge of nightslack.