Z The layered hedge

The layered hedge

At summer’s end, just out of childhood, I remember watching an old man layering a hawthorn hedge. Strong knotted hands slashed into branches which wrenched white to show the split cords of their life.

He had seen two wars. Driven horse teams through the Flanders mud and returned. In that later war he watched the skies for fire. A sentinel against the never (thank God) invasion.

He understood the weave of seasons, elements and time: air and water, fire and earth. And so, he took the blade to the branch and ripped it down, twisting the split wood, weaving it ruthlessly to form a strong hedge of bare and tortured thorn.

But in the spring the leaves broke – delicate, fringed like small, translucent, embryo hands of silken green –and healed the scars. The hedge was whole again.

Blossom burst like surf –white and startling with beauty.

Janet Killeen