November

NOVEMBER

The month is November. This surely is the quietest time of all. You can stand in the middle of a Killaraght field and savour the stillness. The world is a huge silence, not heavy or depressing, but rather contemplative of growth and movement to come. Like a gentle sleep from which joy, life and energy will return renewed.

Some trees have given up the struggle against the winds. But there is much to compensate for their lack of colour. Remaining leaves run the rainbow's gamut. Hedges proudly push forward their robust and brilliant children, the hips and haws.

Frank Conry - 12th November 2006

The wild red sky evokes some quality of Russian literature. Clouds are flaming cloaks which throw a pink reflection on the dead bracken, pale yellow grasses and greyish reeds. The air has a softness more tender for the lurking bite of the night frost.

 Along the edges of the silence run sporadic noises. A bird squawks with seemingly unnecessary raucousness in a grove of disrobed tress. Swans on Lough Gara are rehearsing their plaintive chant in anticipation of the heavy frost. In the hollow a vixen screams. The gathering silence is disturbed. A sullen roar can be heard from the heavy lorries on the distant Frenchpark road. Dogs bark sharply in Ballymore and voices with flat cadences are raised in greeting.

For contrast, there is the silent movement in the swift flight of another bird, followed lightly by its mate. Evening mists, like shreded lace, start rising from the bog, swirling frothily to cover the bushes in the fort and eerily enveloping the trunks and branches of the nearby trees.

The sun shows a scarlet face low on the horizon. A lonely moon meanders vaguely higher up in the sky, accompanied by an embarrassed star. The stillness intensifies. It is time to go home.

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