(017)
Torn from its moorings with a violent fury, that is how the journey begins. Tossed willy-nilly in the centre of a swirling vortex, unable even to exercise its ability to soar. Instead it is pulled far, far away, never to return.
It is eventually relinquished from the storm. Discarded on the dying wave of a gale and left to gently spiral its way to the earth for the first time, where it lands amongst its innumerable twins coalescing at the lip of an unpaved road. It does not rest here long, however, as the breeze becomes a barrage and the gusts return to gales. The seed is once again swept into the swell and dragged towards the unknown. It tumbles across fields and careens down roads, entirely untethered from reason.
A brief refrain leaves it adrift, spinning silently on the backdraft until it clatters quietly against the wooden boards of a wagon’s carriage. It passes through a gap between the sheet that covers the cargo and the wagon itself. Most other seeds bounce off of the covering or ricochet against the spinning wheels, left behind to the mercy of the oncoming waves. The wind claws at the fabric incessantly, but it is some time before the seed is in the air again. With its wing pinched beneath the corner of a crate it remains unmoved. The steady rumble of the wheels now carry it somewhere new.
The sheet is pulled back and the cargo is unpacked in a flurry of boots and calloused hands, the gruff sounds of men’s voices interspersed with bouts of honest laughter. The wagon is all but empty when the seed is found. Scooped up and chucked out of the back in a manner that seems careless, although the man watches on as it twirls out of sight before continuing his work.
The crisp morning air threatens to turn the dewey grass to frost, but not quite yet. The seed lands atop the blades and is daubed with the moisture, resting in a way that offers itself to any obliging breeze. So, of course, it is soon taken up on that offer. Led gently back into its dance like a marionette on strings. It appears to frolic in the field, pouncing like a kitten at the shadows of mice. Each gentle gust springs it once more into action, only to land but a few feet away. Little by little it creeps across the open divide, by moonlight and sunlight alike. Nonetheless the uninhibited progress can only last for so long, and its march is finally halted by the evergreen prickles of a holly bush. Tangled within the web of limbs at the edge of a field, remaining there as autumn matures. Hidden from view for longer than the rest of its journey combined. Lost, like so many others.
But for an ant, perhaps it would have remained there.
Instead, pincers pry, a procession passes, and the seed is once again free. Carried for only a moment in the open before the wind pulls it and the ant into the air. The ant clings on for as long as it can, but not long enough, flung eventually into obscurity.
The seed glides into the woods, cruising past the trunks of trees and berry covered bushes. Each new updraft buoys it ever further. The breeze coos and beguiles the seed over a mossy bank and brings it into land beside a river. It rests amongst the blades of grass, a mere handful of metres away from oblivion. The wind tempts and caresses and the seed jitters and trembles, and then all at once a heavy gust presses it flat and the sky darkens above it. A single fat raindrop thuds the dirt beside it, followed by another, and then many more. A freeform rhythm hammers the dust for days and melts it into mud, burying the seed within a shallow grave.
Not long after the rain subsides, it is finally time for the frost to take over. The dew hardens, and cocooned within its icy lattice the seeds’ dormant state is ended.
In the early warmth of the following spring the shell cracks, and from beneath the dirt a tiny green shoot emerges, vulnerable and defiant.
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