Ten years ago on an Autumn day I took a walk in woodland. It was one of those crisp translucent days which turned the telescope of life into the microscope of living, bringing the reality of things so close that they lost their context. No camera could have captured it.

Seeking a way to preserve this memory, I picked up a beautiful new conker. It teased through a split in its shell with a burnished promise of new life and continuance. I carried it home and planted it in my modest garden. Last year it flowered and produced its own crop of seductive exquiisite conkers.

Tonight in the late pale dusk with the distant clear moon behind it, a blackbird chose to perch at the top of my tree and sang.

In all this of course is rooted my own decay..the inevitable axe. Even so, I felt as if some kind of wholeness and fullness had come to my time and I was humbled by a sudden surge of joy, and tears.