A run with a location in mind: the copse, where I wanted to visit the oaks and see what I could see. On the way, i met a couple walking a lovely dog and stopped to chat. They said that a robin had been following the, so close that they wondered if he would land on their hand if they had food. The man said, "There aren't as many hares as there used to be." I told them that I wanted to go in the little copse and just sit, and how sometimes then I'd see something.
"My Dandad... I mean, my grandad," said the main, "used to say, 'Harvest the quiet eye.' Just sit still and peacefully and see what happens."
I said how much I loved that and the woman said, "A gift for you on this lovely day!"
I took it, with gratitude, and went into the trees.
The big oak and the juvenile one look well. I had a sense of peace and of waiting. I don't know how long I sat, silently, listening. I heard blackbirds, jays, crows, kites, woodpeckers. I saw tits and dunnocks. A flock of pigeons. Ah! And that reminds me of a vast flock of corvids, rooks, I guess, as I drove at dawn to London the other day. Black silhouettes against a peach-grey sky.
There is a joy in me in these places. A quiet effervescence. A lightness. The blue of the sky above the stark entangled branches. Low sun and the chill in the shade. Ice crystals on grass like those sugared swizzle sticks. The aliveness of it all.
Harvesting the quiet eye.
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