ECHO 20/4/06 - Italy

Dawn chorus like none I have ever heard before - in there the ‘gale of course like the tester against which all else must prove; a cuckoo some ways off; blackbirds; hundreds of sparrows, starlings and finches; and an odd almost donkey-like grunt that may be a bustard or similar - I make it my quest to catch a glimpse of the nightingale while I am here - one of the hardest birds to spot despite the amount of noise it makes! -

Digging the earth, trying to uproot an oleander to transplant elsewhere in the garden - they are poisonous so we try not to breath too deeply around it, pulling the thick stems as we shovel the root ball up - the damn thing doesn’t want to move and it takes three of us to finally get it out; sweating and starting to burn in the morning sun - feels good to be getting dirty here, with the clay soil stuck to boots and fingers - grit and creosote - ants and their queens tumbling and scurrying out from hidden chambers in the earth and the wood we move, so many of them its like watching a fluid, like oil or black blood -

When sleep comes I am sun-kissed and mildly blistered - yet nothing aches except that part of me that longs for Pol (sweet scent and laughter) - I lie with the window wide open - the night is alive here with frogs and toads mewling in the ditches; the choral, meandering nightingale - heavy lidded, sleep come -