I rest and raise my head from a session of winter digging.
It isn't really cold but still my nose is dripping.
It's damp and growing dark. Eastward the the wind is rolling
a grey duvet of cloud across a bare hill's muscled shoulder;
westward is a skyline of skeletal trees resembling
a distant platoon of ragged soldiers surrendering.
A single seagull tacks across the wind spiralling
arabesques on the sky. Now a flotilla of more gulls
appears, a wind blown bluster of white leaves whirling.
Then I hear a call. I know the sound. Like a mewing
animal. I search the sky. There. High up, circling
around each other. Not animals but birds. Buzzards.
Three of them dancing the air, continually calling.
And now two more fly in to join them, all five ascending
towards the clouds. Five ! Surely they must stop rising
now. They are almost into the bottom of the cloud.
But no. One by one they disappear into the grey fluff.
I wait for them to re-appear. Nothing. I keep watching.
Still no sign of them. Eventually I tire of waiting,
shoulder my spade and start to walk home wondering
what an earlier, more superstitious age would have made
of the event. Some secret place in the clouds welcoming
the birds home? An avian country ? A kingdom of buzzards?
