F (February)

F is for February, grass whitening that could go up in a fire. Fire, the mental preparation can go on all year. Schoolchildren are on the footpaths again, the school run a frantic bank-up of bumper bars. Butterflies inhabit their being that will flit thither once the teacher starts talking her alphabet. G is for good, a word like any other. Does it require mental preparation? Good breathes through the grass and will stop a bushfire, though no one talks in these terms. We learn it in school but it’s never merely conceptual. We feel its presence when it’s absent.