Images of green

Journeys take you out of yourself, out of your normal landscape and its often-heard music.  Today I saw poppies, bright splashes of red to surprise the green, growing in patches on verges and here and there, oh joy, in swathes on country fields.  Here and there, too, a cluster of white, elderflowers like large lace buttonholes of clotted cream and swaying wildflowers waving above the grass and bracken.  But today’s palette is green, seas of it stretching to a moving horizon, grass mown or tufting, trees full and plump with purpose, filling the eye and the heart with rest.  It is a summer colour and the green and the sun fill the space so naturally it is hard to imagine winter; we attune to plenty as children attune to presents, setting it as our compass-bearing for the life we long to live.

But we need this.  We need the times of feasting and filling our hollow souls with a surfeit of beauty and restful splendour, drinking it deep, lining the dark, cracked crevices with a carpet of colour, storing the sunshine like honey as food for darker days.  And each sweet day trips memories of others tumbling in a waterfall of holiday happiness. 

I am a squirrel laying down stores for winter, absorbing layers of light and images of green until my cup runs over.