Land

The road climbs gently between two rows of terraces, cars scattered across it. The road is nothing exceptional; there are thousands just like it everywhere in this city. But it is the land on which it sits – it’s shape – where it takes an identity. Trees sprout through the pavement and attempts have been made to control them, with tarmac poured on top of their roots. The rest of the pavement rises and falls like a landscape in miniature. Here and there the concrete slabs are crushed as if the builders of this road, some fifty years ago, didn’t bother to fill in the holes dotted across the field in which they were working. In doing so they left it to a heavy removals van, or maybe some boisterous youths, to crack the slabs, like frozen puddles in winter.

The road itself is smooth as a sheet of paper and has no holes. However it too is just a crust and is a foot deep at most. Beneath the road lies soil and clay that has always sat there and that will always sit there. One day, this landscape of tarmac and concrete, will be left derelict, maybe only in part, and the earth beneath will be waiting. Life, in the form of grass and trees, will break through and gradually destroy piece by piece this artificial crust created by man. Land is alive and endures forever. When you think about what you have achieved remember what lies beneath your feet.