Lying Fallow

It sounds so cosy – “lying fallow”. Farmers rest in the winter months (they don’t; still, we imagine cold nights warmed by the fireplace and down blankets through the icy dawn) but soil is given years to rest when the fecund time ends; years, years to rest. It sounds refreshing, lying fallow, but fallow fields are spent, denuded, dessicated and lonely. They feel the rain fall indifferently and springtime does not bring new seeds. Summer’s growth happens elsewhere to them; the harvest, year by year, ignores them – and so to winter again. Seasons and more seasons. One day the farmer walks to the fallow field sinks his spade deep into the earth and turns the sod. Beneath the dry, cracked surface the soil is rich, rejuvenated. He looks to the sky, and smiles. And so it is, after barren seasons – months, years perhaps – I look at the page in front of me softened by ink fertile once again.

 

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