SOME THOUGHTS ON HOW TO CLEAN THE PLANET

THEY LEFT THEM OUT

The corrugated iron sheets on the shed roof rattled in the wind and the old timbers eased themselves under their burden. Mouse droppings trailed along the worn workbench.

On the wall of the shed six wooden pegs held scythes and grey dusty cloaks. On another wall, seven other pegs held the same with a space for one more. Obsolete now.

Struggling out from the foot of the Hazel and Willow’s luxuriant softness John Barleycorn threw upward glances as he sprang onto the slope on his legs of woven sprigs; visualizing what he remembered when human activity transformed the mountainside. The perceived human horror of cleansing. The un-acceptance of death in a society that expects to live forever. The grimness of horror and not necessity.

‘Time to check it out’ he said.

Things had changed. Snowfalls and summer rains had washed and dispersed the black stain around and down. Body fluids had leached into the ground and fed the waiting lichen, saxifrage and even edelweiss.

He looked down too, into empty fields, and the whiteness of bleached animal bones were the moral reminders of society’s carelessness.

Grey shrouds brought the older generation to this rocky place, far above the deserted villages, for a reason. Hiding away the loss of those who had gone and those that lived on, but only for awhile. Not one of them left to hold the hands of the living until they, too, had passed on.

They came singularly at first. Others alerted to the movement in the skies added to the host. Sharp eyes and sensitive nostrils told them what was intended. Big eyes, large ripping beaks tearing flesh and sinews from rib cages, legs and arms. Eviscerating intestines with bare necks for cleanliness and a wingspan that casts shadows. Their job, their gut, to sanitise the
infection. And so they did that; cleaned the planet.

Mr Barleycorn surveyed the greenery. Even the small berries of Juniper shone for his eyes. All growth fed by the prevailing winds and rain and that activity in desolate places long ago.

The hinge on the pub sign creaked again.The Green Man smiled as he swung in the wind. His lips sealed in time.
John Edwards 18th May 2020