TE23 Double Feature

Gaia Warnings

Philip Burton

musses its paws among dead leaves.

Everything just exactly so: meagre corn-meal in the byre: the harvester greased and under wraps: the dead, quiet. The lonely cartwheel spins the combing flakes to brush its lean spokes. Leather straps whip the alder-pegs on the flapping stable door. The furrows narrow to a dotted line. The tired vixen screams, and goes to earth. The farm lies open as a night before a war. “I come to you my love, to cover you,” a whisper made of silence in the coppice, the only-ever-promise made by new snow. The grudge-deep ditch fills, is forgotten. 118

Next year this farmer will scrap his tractor give his heart and hand to the no-till approach. Fewer weeds will blight the harvest and the wheat will ripen quicker, stronger.

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