On August and Wheels Turning.

The end of another August; the end of another summer. The harvest is mostly gathered in, the willowherb is white with woolly seeds, and the dry detritus of early fallen leaves is becoming more evident almost by the day. And so I could go on about the world turning, and the wheel of life turning, and the husks of humanity’s fallen turning into clay. But it’s all old stuff which only seems to matter to the old anyway.

But what of the bigger picture of another turning wheel – the turning of the planet into something less hospitable to frail and mortal mankind? It seems oddly ironic that it’s only the old who don’t have to worry about it. But then another question arises: do we all live on a further wheel still – the wheel of life, death and rebirth? And if we do, how long will it take to come back here? Will we make landfall into a hotter, crazier, less certain world of struggle and shortage and the tedium of migration?

‘I’m glad I’m at this end of my life,’ say the older people when they read of fires and floods and frantic storms becoming ever more frequent. But maybe they’re not at the end of their personal story, but only taking a break before climbing onto another wheel to do it all over again. Nobody can tell us, can they? If they could, maybe we would do things differently.

I woke up feeling cold in bed last night. It seemed an odd thing to be doing in August.