This is the beginning of a sketch of the grasses on an unused allotment plot. The blonde stalks shoot upwards in random sheaves of diagonals and uprights. Some of them are golden, bent at the waist. Others rise and curl into a canopy or wig of curled leaf. From the side these look like swords, scimitars and cutlasses. Here are handles and hoops, lances and loops. Some wriggle like fluttering pennants, coil like ringlets. It's a kind of herbal calligraphy. Beneath the blonde stalks, in the understorey, things are shadier. This is where the shorter tufts and tussocks of green grass grow. And beneath that, several inches down, in tiny triangular crevasses and secret shard-like shapes, lies the invisible ground from which this florid forest springs. Taking time to look more closely at ordinary things is an obsession, a luxury, an affliction and a gift from locked down times. We can't live without this natural life. And that is only one reason why I find it beautiful. |