Bog Myrtle & Peat

We were used to the dry light and the rising sides of hills gone grubby like bales from the back of the stack. Nothing was growing, but I saw my first two swallows high above the river on Monday, toiling in the silent cold. I felt sorry for those frontrunners; I hear that most of them die if they come too soon.

But when we woke up this morning, it seemed like the grass had greened overnight with a fall of rain which I missed on account of sleeping. The grass had come on, but maybe that greening was more like an optical illusion – a watery blue light overlaid on a place gone yellow to conjure up a surge of risen emerald and mist.

And in a warm unwinding wind from the southwest, more swallows arrived in their dozens; black and ragged in the low cloud, and this time they were singing.