TO THE EAST OF THE GARDEN

To Man he gave a countenance to look on high and to behold the heavens, and to raise his face erect to the stars.

Ovid: Metamorphoses 1

In the corner of the field next to the old labourer’s cottage stood a tall ash tree, its curving branches still bare beside the new greening of the hedge. Three ring necked parakeets replete with pear blossoms sat in the sun, their ever moving long tails  keeping their balance on the high insubstantial branch of their choice. Every so often one of them would walk sideways along the slippery bark and, almost quicker than the eye could comprehend, turn upside down, its beady eye glittering in the sunlight. A black bird sang a love song to his brown hen while two fat pigeons, stuffed with stolen corn, basked lazy in the sunshine.
 
    Into this place of sun dappled peace came a short legged climbing Kentish cat intent on catching pigeon for his larder. Stuck in a low branched fork, he made a foray to his left along a perilously bouncing slender branch. He clung on for dear life, backed down to the safety of the fork again, tried the slightly bigger branch to his right, but that began slowly to sag, rotten wood threatening to break. Retreating again to the fork, with his hind feet firmly anchored to the trunk, he stretched out unsheaved claws making out that he was about to spring. His hind legs slipped again and defeated he curled up into a tight ball of  fur. Ignoring the scornful avians overhead and  dreaming of  his  brown pottery bowl in the kitchen, he slept.
 
    From a bank at the far end of the field two youngsters watched the drama of the day unfolding.  A slim light brown body, twenty centimeters nose to tail, pretty rounded ears, long nose and whiskers, white bib and stomacher, sturdy clawed feet, quite still except for whiskers  aquiver: a weasel looking for a breakfast egg or a tender chick for her kittens.  Falling out of the sky,  black   crested   and   cloaked  in iridescent blue like a pair of feathered acrobats, the lapwings landed close to their nest  some 40 yards from the rough grass where they had hidden their new chicks. They circled the empty nest, dancing and beating their wings, and screaming their haunting cry into the quiet of the morning. Disconcerted by the violence of the movement and the shrieking of two birds larger than herself, the weasel froze, then turned and scuttled away into a patch of tall thistles to search elsewhere for breakfast.
 
    Peace returned. The birds in the tree preened their feathers; the cat went home for Whiskas; the lapwings fed their chicks; and the weasel, at last, found a mouse for her hungry family.

      The young man put out a hand and pulled his girlfriend to her feet.      
    “Come on,” he said, “we’ve got things to do.”
    “Must we go?” she asked. “It’s so … sort of timeless here, and safe.”
    “Yes, we must. Got to get to the Bank before it closes. Presents to buy!”
 
    She laughed and they ran through the field gate back towards the village. ‘Thus Glory fades’ murmured the Gatekeeper. Silently he folded his four great wings, and a flaming sword turned every which way about the path.

Naomi