Morning on Houghton Meadows

It is the morning with a cloudless sky, one that you would probably not photograph. The sun hasn't risen yet, there is frost on the grass, and mist rising in the sky to the east shows where the sun would shine in a peach and salmon pink gradually fading in that way that the sky can in the morning or evening in such a clear day, in a gradient imperceptibly fading between the orange-peach of the east and the cornflower blue of the west. 

Higher up in the east is Mercury, an unwavering pinprick of light shining through the sky. Like a hole pierced in our reality and showing beyond it the sublime of this life or perhaps another.

The trees on the horizon, dark straggled broken crooked fingers into the sky of the last of the cold winter mornings. And on the horizon rise the ravens out of their overnight roost. I watch them rise like a mote of smoke and then shatter as if some silent explosion and they all head in different directions to whatever it is they will do that day. 

I and the dog return to the west along the hedge rows and fences and look to see the line of blackbirds flying towards us; moving up and down in the syncopated synchronized rhythm of the wingbeats; looking like silent musical notes on a staff or perhaps Braille, unseeable by those who could read it and unreadable but those who can see. A message perhaps or a portent of what lies in our future.