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We are often more tender to the dead than to the living, though it is the living who need our tenderness most.
Flowstone is the name given to the calcite deposits that precipitate out of minerally saturated water as it runs over the slopes of limestone caves. You might imagine flowstone as a kind of white candle wax, gradually hardening as it runs, though it is built up over spans of time rather than by brief incandescence. Because of the gradual nature of its formation, flowstone sets into elaborate ruches and folds – elephant-skin gathers of texture, wrinkled stockings. Flowstone is very beautiful to look at and very hard to grip.
Flies on the grass blades are exotic as tigers – eyes of a thousand ruby hexagons, wings of the finest filigree.
We lie so still that a grasshopper lands inches away, and I watch its drumsticks quiver as it drags leg over wing case, stridulations streaming out.
