Sitting, Looking, Thinking, Praying.

I tend to sit under a tree, beside a hedge, looking through the hedge into a field beyond. I try to arrive twenty minutes before dusk and I sit there as quietly as I can in the hope that the local wildlife will, with time, overlook the scandal of my arrival and go about their appointed tasks without any concern for me.

So I sit there with the business of the hedge and the field taking place in front of me and the commotion that I am taking place – inside, outside, all around me - as worry, fear, longing, fury, hope, fantasy and grief.

Field mice have a highway in front of me: tiny brown blurs that zip across my vision; robins come and look at me; too quick to really see, a wren will hurtle through the branches of the hedge and disappear.

Bored with the nonsense rattling round my mind, I’ll often try to pray instead, try to establish some sort of peaceful climate, try to just sit there looking at the hedge and the field rather than sitting there - oblivious to the world - with my head trying to wring my own neck.