I mused upon the weeds one day, upon the torn and ravaged ground. Their healing fronds and trailing leaves, repairing torn and damaged space. I mused from window set on high, on field of rusting dusty past. A place of toil returned to tortured ground. On this scarred lonely, battered place, a single horse had there been placed, attended by the passers-by who fed and comforted his trial. And then within a summers grace, the weeds returned to that bare place. They flourished as they spread their balm o’er muddy mounds, and what was lost, miraculously returned from dust. A plover paused and built her nest and Peregrine sought sustenance among natures entitlements. The lonely horse found rich reward for patience in that sweet new state, and paused no more at freedom’s gate. He was refreshed.
And then sweet summer passed and without warning, bulldozers and the men came pouring, to tear again at natures breast, and wrest the life from healing weeds. They covered nature and the buried seeds of restoration and sweet dreams, that nature had provided well for beast, and those who in that place did dwell. A field subsumed by new demands of men and throngs of busy crowds, determined to fulfil their need for progress, and a timeless greed. The Peregrine he came no more, the seeds were hid beneath the world of men and time. And from his place of plenteous fare, the horse was gone, he was no more. The Plovers sought another home and those who loved this place would groan, at soulless buildings with their sightless eyes, and those who passed so unaware that deep beneath their place of wealth, another world once slept. And dreamt of nature in its rawest form – a field of weeds so lately torn.
Margaret Gambold is an author, graphic and textile artist living and working in Ferny Creek, Melbourne. She is an Elder from Kennon Memorial Church in Sassafras. You can see more of her work at MGARTS.
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