BESIDE THE MEADOWS

It was winter when I caught you trespassing.  You claimed to be lost and gave me a beseeching look from innocent eyes.  I wanted to show off the rivers of ice, the frozen lake, the cold beauty of the frost and the dew laden spiders’ webs in the trees.  Most of all I wanted to share the quietude.  You were in awe of it and as I spoke of industry and economics you became impressed with me.  We met day after day in the spellbound winter and fell in love by the turgid river.

The dry cold season softened to spring and out came the birds, legions of them, laying eggs along the water.  You were so excited about the prospect of signets and ducklings.  You laughed at the monotonous song of the chiff chaff and danced with bare feet on the warm grass.  We were glad to see the back of winter.  “Live with me here, beside the water meadows,” I said.

And so, you moved into the house that was once my father’s, overlooking the land he’d left me.  Each day you watched for ducklings and signets, you marvelled over the blue bells growing from the yellowing grass.  I was perturbed by the height of the river – it was falling.

The summer came with searing heat.  I kept myself inside to avoid the relentless sun.  I didn’t want to look at the water, it was shrinking back.  I could hear my father’s dying words; “Beware the drought ... The things we have buried ...”.  I had to stop you from going outside.  You were confused when I locked you in the bedroom.  I made it a nice cage, decorating it with pictures of the birds you loved so much, indeed I would have given you anything you wanted, but there was no way I was letting you out.  I had to protect you from the horror that was unfolding out in the water meadows.  The river was now a slurry of slime and the lakes had receded.  The signets hatched deformed and the ducks abandoned their babies.  The trees in plunging their roots deep underground for water had found poison; their trunks turned black, their brittle branches fell away.  The chiff chaff was silenced.

This is my legacy my love, my water meadows, littered with the corpses of wildlife, guarded by decaying trees and the smell ... you can detect it from your room now, can’t you?  That metallic odour that my father once called success.