Music on the breeze
The melody we pass each day
Finding comfort in poetry, and nature
Greetings from the moss, and welcome to this week’s letter.
I wake on Sunday to learn that another stone has been thrown into already rough seas. It’s not lost on me that ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ rests on my bed table. Wendell Berry’s book of poems is new to me, an extra slipped into my basket on account of its resonant title. We need the peace of wild things, the stillness of water, now more than ever, even if our fixation on carbon risks leaving it behind.
You can read the poem here, or listen to me read it in the audio voice over.
Later in the day, I go out to watch the grasses dance, listen to the birds, count wildflowers and put names to those I know, and let the breeze blow it all away.
The only thing we seem to know now is uncertainty, the soundtrack to our lives. Flotsam at the mercy of an increasingly restless tide. Is it the world that has flexed or the acceleration of knowledge?
The melody we pass each day
Serendipity often guides this letter. Some weeks I know in advance what I want to write to you about; others I remain open to possibility. Often the prompts come from a walk; sometimes they are last minute as the sky unveils its latest canvas. This week they have come from the verge; the place we run over and cut unnecessarily and drop litter in. It is nature too, a corridor connecting the shrinking green spaces. Perhaps it was the grey sky, the movement in the breeze, the sheer profusion of flower…
When you think of flowers I doubt grasses will come to mind. I have a weak spot for them, which possibly dates back to the popularisation of grass gardening and Piet Oudolf’s wonderful designs mixing herbaceous plants with grasses. If you don’t know his work, this illustrated article will give you a feel for it. I have grown for leaf, stem and flower the grasses Deschampsia, Molinia and Calamagrostis; sedges from the genus Carex; rushes from Luzula.
The tracks and lanes have a score playing; meanwhile an operetta is in full swing at the top of the bank that bounds the garden. The grasses are as notes dancing along the staves of the verge. My pace slows as I stop and bend low to look more closely, and sample snatches of song with the camera.
Did you know?
If you enjoy my images and words, you might like to buy or gift a copy of ‘A New Topography’, an affordable ‘zine of words and photographs from the moss, priced £10 plus postage.
This week I recommend reading:
’s call for nature, land and water to be part of the conversation.
Thank you for reading FLOW; I love to hear from you and know what thoughts these letters prompt.
Until next week,
Encore: the extra something at the end
I have fallen under the spell of the dancing grasses and they have found a place in my experiments with watercolour and ink.
All words and images copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted
A lovely piece of writing and evocative pictures, thank you. Each morning we walk up the hill to the huge field, where the dog can stretch her long legs in figures of eight. I call it my Skylark Meadow and, at the moment, it is thigh-deep in grasses, which flow in extraordinary waves in the sea breeze.
Soon we will watch the cutting machinery grind it's way up the lane, and soon it will be shorn and baled. Time to take the shears to the tiny patch of Skylark Meadow in my back garden 😊
Thank you for A New Topography, which arrived today - addressed to Alistair, as I had used his PayPal account 😊...
He was particularly interested to trace your whereabouts from your postal address, as the Scottish side of his family all lived in NE Scotland and the various inland towns and villages, and he has been doing the Ancestry thing 😊