Wild winds

There’s an August storm whipping through the trees outside. Trunks bending, branches flailing wildly in the gales. The leaves are heavy, and the ground moves up and down with the gusts like waves. Plant pots tip and debris piles in corners. I leave it until the winds settle.

There are two small casualties of the storm, baby wood pigeons blown from the nest, sad little bodies in the rain, thin yellow feathers on cold skin. My heart hurts for them, and I carry them over the wall to a sheltered spot, scattering rose petals on their tiny wings. May they be used well, feeding new life, absorbed back into that interconnected web of which we all are part. A candle flickers for them now, as darkness falls. It is nature, and baby birds a precarious part of that, but we watched the parents pick twigs from our roof, spending time getting just the right ones, and I feel a wrench of sadness at the end of this nest for the year.

The wind is strong but warm, and runs through my hair like fingers when I turn my face to the gale. Usually I’d be up on the moors, running wild in the storm, but this year and the last I feel more of a pull to stay home. It is a quiet period for me, a conserving of energy, the slow times. It is what it is. Instead I read, and potter, and do some mundane household bits, whilst the rain batters the windows and the trees are shaped by wind-wraiths. There is a freshness to this wind, a clear smell, a cleansing. It wraps around the stone walls of the house, brushing away any lingering stagnancy, invigorating, clarifying. With our week away it seems all the cellar spiders in the world have moved in, and the house is expectant, cloying, waiting. It needs this movement, this autumn clean. I clean the inside, slowly, chaotically, opening windows to refresh stale air. The wind joins me, and together we revive these four stone walls.