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# Nature’s Grenade
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/19470/
- Published: 2005-07-09T12:07:37.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:33:50.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:15

**Nature’s Grenade** 
  
**Candida Clark**  
  
Before we drove back to London ­  
It was evening, late June, Dorset ­  
We walked through the valley  
Where breath came rising from seas  
Of tall grass and the bracken grew curling  
In licks like flames ­ we had to fight through;  
A soft fight; the flames were waves ­  
To get to a far point, bang in the thick of it,  
Where, by the stream, there was a place to stop.  
The bracken stayed rising, birds were in the high trees.  
The night before, there had been a night-jar,  
And we’d sat on a log to listen.

We found the spot, and you bent to pick up something  
That seemed to have been cast off. You put it in my palm  
Before I could see it. I shut my eyes.  
It was the precise shape of a hand-grenade,  
The weight not far off, the texture almost true;  
Cold, too, and sticky as though held too long  
Through nerves, or indecision, before being chucked ­  
At just the right moment to cause maximum creation:  
Nature’s grenade; a cedar cone. They take three years to make.  
The thing is on my desk right now.  
It's my favourite gift from you ­  
The sap oozing, the scent rising, the life waiting.

Today, wishing myself back beneath that tree,  
I read how Solomon, building the temple,  
Asked Hiram, King of Tyre,  
For Cedars from the forests of Lebanon.  
The wood transplanted, the motive went full circle - ­  
Religion running always after life.