I lay on the lawn looking up at the wide blue sky. My skin was in need of sun. The late spring had been unusually hot and the garden needed rain, desperately. The sky was cloudless and without trace of any tell-tale vapour trail. The oak that overhung the bottom of the garden was visited by high-flying bees but there was no sign of the Purple Emperor butterflies I had hoped to see. Instead two tiny goldcrests flitted among the burgeoning leaves.
As I gazed up into the blue I spied a distant buzzard rising casually on some invisible thermal. I imagined for a moment that I too was soaring high up above and, looking down upon this microscopic world, viewed the tiny lives that moved about their daily business unsuspectingly.
A red kite hove into view at low altitude. Would he mistake me for a meal, I wondered? He quickly he rose on perfect angled wings into the vast skies above and was soon lost to view. I heard the blackbird scuttling about in the dry leaves at the back of the wild border. A holly blue butterfly transited across the garden, its typically random flight immediately familiar. Returned to Earth once more, I heard a sudden thud. A small bird lay beneath the conservatory window. She twitched and fitted for just a moment, then her eyes closed and she was gone.
I buried her quietly behind the tree that guards the yellow border, away from prying eyes and the attention of unwelcome cats.
© IMB (May, 2020)