Voices are a River Voices are a River

from Collective Field Notebook - Festival of Nature 2023

someone takes a photo of leaves making shadows on the asphalt, nature’s lightbox, scattered harmonies

Phones go near the smaller places, taller places, makeshift microscopes in our hands. A child’s face in a thicket of trees, school children in the hills below, while dragonflies and beetles dip in and out of our vision, suspending time between the parting of their wings.

I hear a story of a river which flowed under the motorway, phantom liquid, life-giver, city-river, transports this community of voices to the park and the place where we walk today.

Someone answers their phone, or twirls a dog lead in their hands, or jogs past in pink trainers and a baseball cap.

‘Have you heard of any river myths?’

‘How can I paint that exact shade of green, a fallen leaf a single blade of grass?’.