Two kinds of crying : 15th February 2024
![Gold cherry Gold cherry](/sites/abctales.com/themes/abctales_new/images/goldcherry.png)
![Pick of the Month Pick of the Month](/sites/abctales.com/themes/abctales_new/images/pom.png)
![](https://www.abctales.com/sites/abctales.com/files/styles/cover/public/covers/417574066_122120623760191878_6227661979701445562_n.jpeg?itok=5t8EttVG)
By Di_Hard
- 3095 reads
Leaving the road for the slick, clay-swallowed gravel of the footpath, newly scalped of its sodden, rot smelling dark brown felt of last year's fallen leaves, is to let go of firm footing and unnatural striving for expectation. Immediately, the air feels cleaner. Wild garlic shoots prickle the path's banks with fresh green. In immersion of birdsong I attempt the short steep slope up onto the grassy path; sleek surface eroded by previous ascents, mine and others, a few delicate-seeming, yet strong-clinging roots from an ivy-twined, moss-mottled young birch tree are the only stay to sliding back down. I try not to need to grab onto an ash sapling, but just to curl my fingers round its supple, olive green stem is enough to bring back balance and I make it past the risk of claggy ignominy.
I like to walk every day, if I can, take photos of the beautiful things I see in the woods - there is a freedom there, from my mistakes, from the mistakes of the world. I thought it would be too dark for photos, today, when the rain stopped, so left my camera behind, but now wish I had brought it.
A billion trillion raindrops cling, shimmering to dark grey tracery of beech twigs, each tipped in a fine fawn point, holding the plans for a furl of zingy green to emerge in April and set the woods afizz.
As if the faint late afternoon light was squeezed between the soft grey lid of low cloud and cold earth, space is luminous here, concentrated into an essence of clear purity.
The only warm colour is young beech trees glowing bronze as trumpet fanfares, leaves defiantly holding on long after older trees have been blown bare by winds from far away. But vibrant greens are all around - glittering moss fronds curl softly yet acid bright, and others like miniature forests hummock and climb, in constant urge of their own thriving to surge over all evidence of storm and decay while some swathe rocks and trunks and tapering branches in a breathing deep-pile hug.
Everything is breathing. Rain refreshed, lichen's blue green hues burst out from encrustations on beech and oak trees. Liverworts fuzz rounded boulders in the laughing streams.
Again and again my gaze is drawn to gatherings of radiant drips' trembling scintillation, a symmetry too complex for our minds to hold, slight, delicious coolness making mockery of grand chandeliers' stilted glittering in dead aired rooms where the powerful meet.
Dusk is thickening as I near the footpath's straight line back. Sometimes here, I see a young deer by the flounces of a large rhododendron, and look around, catch a gash of white in the leaf litter, a strange shape.
It is half a small skeleton, one hoof left intact, perfect as a beech twig's bud. Spring will not unfurl for her. Bones picked clean by ravens, buzzard, foxes... She died in the place that made her, and they go into this new year stronger. This is a bleak time for deer,, roots and tough fern leaves all that's left till the new grass grows.
On the footpath, a spaniel frolicks with their walker
In air lustrous with robin and blackbird song I follow them. Trying to forget what I have seen, an old black and white photo on facebook last night comes to my mind, titled Pulse of Palestine, people going about their business, long ago.
Get home, turn on the radio while making tea, and news is of the raid on Nasser Hospital in Gaza. People shot at on the "safe route out", bulldozers and tanks
- Log in to post comments
Comments
"A billion trillion raindrops
"A billion trillion raindrops cling, shimmering to dark grey tracery of beech twigs, each tipped in a fine fawn point, holding the plans for a furl of zingy green to emerge in April and set the woods afizz."
I was right there with you in what is an evocative read, full of startling imagery. That's a powerful, sad and dark finale. Your passion for your walks and where you live shines through in the way this is written, Di. So much love.
[Small typo: erroded]
- Log in to post comments
What a wonderful walk! And
What a wonderful walk! And that because you have eyes to see, and in such description! (I had not heard the word 'claggy' before. Looked it up as I thought you had invented it, like my sinky!). You bring to life the feeling of fresh breezy air and glowing moss.
So sad about the end. Sadly we are in a sinful and complexly sinful world of which we see only a limited amount. But we have to trust that there will be absolute justice one day, and there is hope beyond death offered all. Rhiannon
- Log in to post comments
This is a gorgeous reminder
This is a gorgeous reminder of the beauty of nature in a world that seems so frightening.
Your descriptions were so poetic within the wood and left me with a sense of calm.
Thank you so much for sharing Di.
Jenny.
- Log in to post comments
Great poetic writing, stark
Great poetic writing, stark in contrast to news of the wider world.
- Log in to post comments
Read this very early this
Read this very early this morning and forgot to leave a comment - thank you di for taking me with you on your walk - it adds a beautiful and vivid dimension to a place I already feel I know in pictures. Do you 'write' in your head while you walk? I always used to do that when I was lucky enough to live near woods - they are great thinking places
- Log in to post comments
This makes me want to go out
This makes me want to go out to the woods and look more closely, tune in and feel. Shimmering dew drops and leaves bursting through. 'There is a freedom from mistakes', how true and what if we didn't have access to that? Just illustrates how essential it is to visit thess spaces where everything is breathing and forget, for a while, the appalling scenes of our current conflicts.
- Log in to post comments
This is an excellent piece of
This is an excellent piece of writing Di. I loved the beginning, the middle and the end.
Congratulations it's our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day.
- Log in to post comments
I thought it was great!
I thought it was great!
- Log in to post comments
Shockingly lovely.
A great reminder that what we have contains so much more beauty and tranquilty than the homes of much of the rest of the world. I wish that wasn't true but it is. Your words soften the reader's frame of mind before the contrast and the harsh reality of the final two lines. Shockingly lovely.
Turlough
- Log in to post comments
you are your camera.
you are your camera.
- Log in to post comments
This is our Story of the
This is our Story of the Month - Congratulations!
- Log in to post comments
Everything is breathing...
Caught me, a point I try to keep in tune with in awareness, work, play, self focus &, as you eloquently took us on a tour of your nature walk.....
If I may be so bold and comment on the end....
Gaza... as bad & sad, tragic & dark & suffering + politically charged as it is, bad news makes the best news. There is a light there, a lot of very smart hard working people making a come back series of small success stories that will grow larger to be scene in the near future... In the sense, as you observed, " Everything is breathing"... its on life support there, but breathing,.... The stupid people that started this & escalated it, cant execute over time = time is not their side....
There is an economic driven political gravity shift there for the better.... (thats another issue for later)
Plan B. (for now)....
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68541981
Respectfully I fully understand you & sympathize with the other opinions herein.....
Just trying to shed a little light from a view that is not seen or heard & certainly hard work that goes under reported & seldom recognized......
I enjoyed reading it*
and your other works... (I learn quite a bit from writing, style and grace)
- Log in to post comments
weeping
Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps.
Love that quote can't get enough of it. Doesn't really fit in but so your Title too! I see the rain is crying but the other kind not mentioned. I've wondered why you have a silver badge but not posting? Well least then lately, I must say you always get a terrific number of comments like Jenny too.
Keep well Di! Tom
- Log in to post comments