from under the crab apple tree

life - death - life cycle

One of my favourite places to be is under the crab apple tree. I lie down, head to the sky. She sprawls above me, wizened branches protecting me from the unseasonably hot English sun. Her fruit is bountiful and face scrunchingly sour. There’s a heat wave in England they say and it’s 30 degrees in the shade. The trees are starting to sag and the verges are turning brown.

Beside me is a wrought iron chair that looks glamorous but uncomfortable like the towering heels I attempted to wear as a teenager. The chair, that I remember from my Grandma Rachel’s house (who died when I was eight), faces out to the mountains to the West.

No one has been up here for a while and nature has reclaimed this field at the back of my parents garden that we simply call ‘The End’.

I’m seeing Natures power everywhere. Her power to reclaim. Our bodies, gardens, projects, hobbies, houses and vehicles back into her earthy embrace. She lulls us into a false sense of security for a while. She plays with us, lets us have some perceived thread of control whilst our bodies are robust and our will is strong. She is like a mother appeasing a toddler, but when the time comes, the toddler is not having the candy and will be scooped up and taken, either screaming or in a state of acquiesce out of the store.

She lovingly watches us as we build homes and plough fields and mow lawns. Then as our bodies start to breakdown and we lose our enthusiasm and the strength to hold a scythe she’s there. Silent and steady. Never rushing. In a heartbeat a freshly mowed field is a wildflower meadow up to your knees.

I take a strange comfort in knowing that everything I do, everything I gain, all the ‘things’ I buy and everything I build will crumble and one day will be covered in ivy and swallowed by trees.

On my daily walk to the 12th century church I’ve become enamoured with in recent years I pass cars on the edge of a farm that are merging back into the earth. The tyres have disintegrated, the metal is slowly being eroded and gentle looking ferns push their way determinedly through the broken windows. Bindweed climbs around them, the spider of time threading her green net as the molecules decompose patiently.

When I reach the cool inside of the church I lie on the cold tiles that have witnessed 900 years of births and deaths and weddings and funerals. I imagine 900 years worth of bodies filing and filing out as the sun rises and sets. I look at the ornate ceiling, impossibly high and studded with gold. I notice for the first time a gold sun in every square. The same image I insisted on getting tattooed on my lower back age 15 which I thought was a mistake, now mirrored in the sky, connecting me to the earth. I close my eyes and feel my body as a portal. I practice dying. I want to be prepared when my time comes.

In the churchyard I climb the lower branches of a Yew tree, said to be over 2000 years old. Her skin is papery like my Dad’s hands. I look out over Kinnersley castle, the brick turrets towering over the church. There is no sign of other human life so it’s me, the tombstones and the swallows.

At the entrance of the church there’s a sign which brings an inordinate amount of joy to my heart.

“Swallows make their nest above here, so please enter the church quietly, dont stand around here talking or making noise”

The swallows have priority. There is still, even now, so much goodness in the world.

Pool Cottage, the house I was born and raised in.