Kestrel

I wrote this in January at a time that Ali was particularly ill, she'd just been discharged from hospital after complications with her lung disease. Whilst in the hospital I read Reality is not what it seems by Carlos Ravelli, a book about a potential theory to unify quantum and classical physics. I feel that  understanding nature in your heart and mind are the same thing, and that the separations we impose are arbitrary. I'd like to explore this more, but here is my first go...

Kestrel

As the wind lashed handfuls of rain along the valley and yesterday’s storm debris lay awkwardly in the mud something made us turn right into the rotten ferns and up along the side of a wall. We’ve never gone this way before, it all seems a bit private, but cloaked in the dusk of a stormy January afternoon we snook on. 

Rabbit had a lot of work to do, frantically joining the dots on a new field of scents, I upped my pace in keeping with her and then caught a hint of something fighting the wind. A kestrel fell and then rose, and by the time it began to hover I had it in the binoculars, focusing past the bare winter sapling that separated us. My heart began to beat faster, and now it was me joining the dots, guided by the fine brushstrokes that the kestrel sketched across the gloaming.

Its thin shape changed continuously and was as sharp as a crack in the sky, the occasional flash of colour from the top of its wing marked a dive, always to rise again effortlessly against a wind that swayed the trees like huge reeds. I felt safe here, in the reed bed, taking cover from the fretful grey sky. I kept my eyes on him and imagined what he saw in the field, the countless ultra-violet urine trails, a hint of some movement before a tilt into dive.

My mind drifts. What if we could see all of the electromagnetic spectrum? Radio waves lolloping by unhindered by the furious wind, the infra-red glow of a sheltering fox ten feet away, and always the distant hum of the big bang in the background. I looked again and saw the kestrel hanging in the great known, framed now by the science that had flooded my thoughts. More beautiful, I whispered.

Rabbit remained seated, her bulky back legs splayed awkwardly to allow her long spine to touch the floor, pink belly radiant against the fermented browns of  last year's ferns. She wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Not interested in birds. Taught frame, wide eyes, patient for a mammal to appear from the lichen-moss folds of the wood below. The kestrel took its final dive and disappeared below the horizon. I watched the empty stage for a while and saw the mills of Connonley crouched below the rushing gales, the Aire valley was going about its relentless business and I felt tired. Lights twinkled on and our fire needed stoking, I no longer felt fractured or confused.

Rabbit kept seeing ghosts in the trees as we walked home and etched on my retina was the perfect curve of a kestrel wing.