The Avenue

A cold wind shreds into moans through the gritted branches of apple trees then quietens to a yawn rippled across the waters of a lake. Further up the valley, half the trees have been uprooted and mounded into bonfires that smoulder through a moonless night. Nearby, long lines of traffic pass on a highway where lives, cocooned in comfort, barrel by through drifts of smoke. One hundred years ago and a hemisphere away, young men from here stood propped in trenches in fear of a more lethal smoke. Folded over a bypassed road, an avenue of trees commemorate the dead. Each bears a weathered plaque. A century on, the names have been hollowed out and no longer live in a memory housed in the mind of a parent, wife or child. Come April, in the pre dawn mist, they are lifted high above their earthly station to become the saints of a secular nation.