31/100: I Would Like

I would like to ask you what this leaf is. I would hold it out to you and you would know if it’s a Rowan or something else, Hawthorn perhaps. Now I look, I see the two are similar, berries still tightly wound in July, blushing to red. I would like to tell you about the irrigation system in my new garden, how at the top, there is a spring safe to drink from. This whole town, ruined by the river running underneath it, they built a road on top, not thinking to divert the water, and now it comes out, wherever it can. By evening, the spring waters the rest of the garden, the damp rising to a haze when the air cools quickly like this, turning my skin to goosebumps as I survey the rest of the garden. For the last two nights, the children have been wakened by strange sound, the long grass, flattened in the morning. We have decided the trespassing beast is large, and likely a badger but you would know. Yes, you would know. I would like to send you photographs. I cannot find where it gets in. The fence, new and strong. I would like to keep watch with you all night until it arrives. I would like to ask if this is an apple sapling or a cherry tree, the fruit pale and indeterminate in its first year of germination. I would like to ask if it’s just a phase. Yes, you would say, it’s all just a phase and in this way, I would know you never knew what to do either. I would like advice on boundary walls and I would like to know if I can cut the branches of the neighbour’s tree back for causing shade at times of day I’d rather it didn’t. I would like to smell honeysuckle and think only of honeysuckle. I would like you to marvel how at a certain specific, fleeting time of day, as evening turns determinately towards dusk, the air here is jasmine, mimosa and hot damp earth full of the gone day, waiting for tomorrow.