Microcosmic

This Skylark will change your life - no really! On my patch walk, I saw a skylark perched on a wall. I stopped to watch it for a while and took a photograph. It occurred to me that this bird has changed my life. All the subsequent moments after seeing the lark would have been slightly different had it not been there. And all those lark-rearranged causes and conditions will continue to cascade into the future. But what about the Skylark. It was only there, at that place and that time, because of a host of factors. That insect, would have influenced it – the one that laid its eggs, hatching into lark food….and that insect foodplant… And so it goes on. A ‘world wide web’ – an infinity of interconnections. Ripples on ripples. A friend on Facebook kindly posted a link to an article he thought would interest me. This reminded me of a documentary I’d seen before, which I then re-watched. My life will never be quite the same simply because of the handful of keystrokes and cli

If heaven exists I think it will be a bluebell wood, it will always be late April, and the sun will always be just coming up. There will be a joyous dawn chorus and there'll be the sound of nearby running water. I asked people on Facebook what ingredients would be in their own personal heaven. I made this poem from the suggestions, taking them more or less 'as is'. a collective heaven curlew call, my grandmother, a bacon butty swallows in puddles by the Co-op meandering footpath, fly agaric I can walk again wood pigeon calls “coo coo boogaloo” cat purring on my lap, rooibos tea fragrance of cowslips and gorse a ripe apple fallen in the first frost sunrise through a tent doorway blackbird's evening song, new notebook laughing in surf, skylarks singing fat pigeons stuffing their faces new leaves to dance our troubles away dappled cool and fresh, woodsmoke, mist never ending summer country lane someone to take the bloody windchimes down! a ladybird’s first spring outing