Border Journal: Pheasants

I march down the hill and across the valley fields. I find ten wooden crates littering an embankment. Some are smashed together at the bottom, others didn’t make it all the way down and seem frozen mid-tumble. The wood has gone grey in the sun. There is a loaded moment when I intuit that another life form is present. Then, in a gush of colour, a pair of pheasants launch from a crate and are in the air, right and left of me, all noise and feathers, flying away across the fields.