Downland

Up on the downland, the bone breaks chalky through the brittle earthen skin. Rends appear, here and there, in which you may see deep into the heaving rolls of time. The chalk, even muddy and worn, is stark white cutting through the gloom. The woods are haunted and remember the sea that stretched from here east, across the continent. Bones of ancient sea life fell and were folded atop one another, compacting into the body of the earth.

As a child I’d march always up the crunching rocky paths, rough underfoot and treacherous even in early evening, up to the woods. The chalk roads, ploughed up by land rovers and tractors, sunk into the earth, the canopy arching over head, such that it formed a kind of tunnel. I’d imagine a great snake, a basilisk, dragging its immense body across the ground, carving holloways through the forest and graving its mark across the landscape.

Deep in my bones, the fire still crackles and spits in the woodburner, the chalk earth is crunching under foot and the winds still course over the valley. I saw it last in the winter, the brume came in tides through the forest and closed the world to a stone’s throw around me. It gave way only to the purple-amber soak of evening, which cast the landscape in unreal colours. An aurora hangs above the hills, pink and green waves sweeping over valleys.

The blood rushes in my hearing, and the ghosts holding seashells to my ear walk in crunching steps.