Out of the train window

On the train to Manchester, passing Banbury, Leamington…

A million miracles of life in the sweep of an eye. Tender green shoots of early spring grass, urgent cellular buds on the  dry twigs of mighty oaks and sycamores. Fitted into the cycle of life, death, decay, new lives, over the millennia, ravaged by gradual and savage change in ages past but always gravitating towards critical states of balance. The old farms the same. Nature transformed into cropped fields and mapped hedges, but they live in intimate collaboration with each new state of balance to preserve the viability of the harvests.

Along the flat, dark tarmac of the sharp roads scuttle our enamelled armadillos. They consume, consume, excrete, excrete, converting noxious substance into noxious substance. They know no cycle, no renewal. They are metaphors for what WE are doing to the earth.

I drive fast cars. Not good.