Sunday, November 21, 2010

Illustration

As winter winds gather in the north to turn this last full week of November from a balmy autumn into bitter winter, I give you a tree. A solitary sisterless tree. It stands at the very heart of England where Warwickshire meets Leicestershire. See how the dense new wheat which rustles around it is already beginning to change from green to gold.

It was close to the ridge-top village of Orton-on-the-Hill on June 26th, two days before my beautiful brother Paul died in his sleep. How lovely was our weather in the month of June this year. It truly flamed. Minutes after snapping this picture, I found myself in a field of rape. Beneath my boots the earth was cracked and dry, aching for moisture like an old man's weathered skin.

If my tree picture was selected to illustrate a poem in a new anthology, I wonder what that poem might concern. Perhaps not just a tree in a field on a summery day. Any thoughts?

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