The Pang of Loss
I move into the shade, clasping the corpse of the kestrel. This wan bed of straw will be the shrine, the site of my funerary rite. Her body is cold and lifeless, entirely limp. Her old vigour and lust for flight are defunct. Her keenness of spirit and her infectious energy are given over to eternity, dispersed like chaff on the autumn wind. I shall offer my respects in purest reverence, wiping away tears from my eyes with my sleeve. I bid adieu though my heart breaks and my eyes appeal, desiring comforting blindness rather than the dread knowledge of this tragedy.
Silver birch are hardy plants, common in the woods of South Yorkshire. They shall serve as the overseers of the tomb, guardians, stalwarts sheltering her makeshift crypt from rain. The shadows will dance for her and lavish a soft attentiveness to her ghost. The dappled sunlight filtering through shall be a poetic eulogy, offered in a language of gentleness. The ephemeral touch of intermittent rays shall pique the remembrance of the warm love she felt when alive. I will command the very branches to attend to her in earnestness and vigilance. I will instruct the ground to keep silence in respect for her rare beauty and dynamic speed.
The murderer in this case is poverty. It holds our village in a deleterious thrall. The lust for a breakthrough into improved wealth and status is like a ubiquitous daydream that everyone entertains and yet no-one accomplishes. None might rise to a more affluent standing. As a result, the spirit fumes and jealousy boils and covetousness tweaks the hearts of the townsfolk, provoking them to acts of spite and malice. Gambling is like a wry flame, a hellish flame, calling punters to her siren’s call. These condemnable spirits worked their evil in Jud this very afternoon. He thought I’d cheated him. He flew into a rage and killed my beloved creature, striking the life from her with a rock; an act of cruelty befitting of The Beast spoken of in the Bible. He is veritably a murderous Cain, of biblical ignominy. The devil himself goaded him to mischief and terror. And though I hate him, it is poverty that perpetrated the act. Poverty is a springboard for crime.
