April Dusk

 We are not going to have Mary long now. 

She sleeps most of the day, and curls up with me for most of the night .

But at dusk tonight, after a bout of cardiac coughing , she perked up like an old lady at a church jumble sale and trotted into the lane with her ears up, and her one eye bright, for her last walk of the day.

These walks with the Welsh are special times now, especially as Bun comes too, her tail erect, her mouth yowling some sort of message which means fun and solidarity. Today she comes from her den in the ponies’ field and she skips alongside us, in that playful way kittens do when they are learning to hunt and sometimes Roger will dart out towards her, in a half arsed effort to dominate. 

Tonight, was sunny but cooling, and Weaver stood on the cottage wall, quietly watching us go. She reminded me of one of the bad footballers at school, one who wanted to play for the team but the one no one chose to play. 

I called to her but she remained stoic and unmoving, only following us into the cottage after we returned, where she retraced her way  to her lonely safe place on my double bed. 

My laburnum is budding carefully in the churchyard and we walked round with some fertilizer to give her a boost. 

Mary watched the rabbits flag us with white tails as Mervin’s racing pigeons shimmer and gently roar around the bell tower on their last lap before home, and under the dying ash trees on my old corner of the graveyard , the gooseberry bushes I planted fifteen years ago look bright and green and healthy.

The dusk arrives gently 

And as we wait for Mary to jump the last shallow step into the cottage, I’m sure I heard the first breeze of a bat down the lane