David Abbott : 'A Certain Day'

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"The valley sighs like an exhaling lung. Vapours rise and muddle with the humdrum sky. Sounds ascend from the loamsome belly of the earth, deep at first but soon decorated with bell-like melodies that form into words. The valley has learned to sing. The first words are clay, rain, thorn, rock. Then vetch, field maple, beetle, owl, hare, worm, and finally barn, path, gravestone. Some of this song I copy down into my notebook the rest soaks unevenly into the rough hessian of my memory. The song today is strange but brings to mind others. It has borrowed couplets, stolen some motifs, comes attired in a hand-me-down melody. Pedalling my bicycle I whistle it home. I whistle it in the kitchen over coffee, while digging in the garden, walking with the dog, cleaning my brushes. It joins the river of song whose words are people, history, death, climate, ritual, life, each of the seasons. It is the river that pulled me to this place and that carries me on to the next. The valley breathes and sings whether I am there or not."

David Abbott, Bristol, May 2022