I Wrote A Novel, But Then Was Distracted

I wrote a novel, then I published it. Then Mr bought me a strimmer, just at nettle harvest time. And the tomatoes were red, grapes purple-black, runner beans rough green - our garden, a bounteous mess - I don’t mind, nor do I mind the work. Time squeezed can also be savoured. How the novel was finished is a mystery. I have started the next one, equally baffled.

This day is sewn in with summer birds, silky light, a fat twine of pigeon, edged in cloud.

Rustling green shadows, one escaped Next Door chicken pecks and is wary.

I can’t manage to publicise my own novel, chook, recapture is unlikely.

I can’t even get in the hammock, I’m lying on the ground under a broken sun umbrella, watching it rotate like a snapped flowerhead.

Dog is slunk into shade. Chook and me in sun. Mr is noises in the shed.

Birds drop flight for a noon rest.

The next days, our weather is changeable. 

Between rain and sun, machines stand in half cut fields. 

Some bales are stacked house high. Others make good seats if you don’t mind a damp backside, or the odd stab of hay. 

It’s too warm for coats. My shirt is getting slowly heavier. Through rain we see deer spring, a buzzard wheel. Crows hustle, ground level, ungainly - you all ready look fat, I tell them, as they stuff crow-craws with spilt wheat, ignoring me. Dog breaks up the Dickensian struts, they fly away with habit, not panic. In the air they have skill, and the dare to hassle a buzzard. Once, only once, did I see the buzzard drop, strike, end the crow’s game. 

Two rainbows appear.

Will there be sun?

Not yet!

Still, the washing could use an extra rinse. Yesterday evening we saw sun and our clothes are stuck with sand.

Ah, yes, and I should just mention: I wrote a novel, then I published it.