Roundabout Island of Mystery

 Roundabout Island Of Mystery
There amidst the chaos, congestion and hurry sits an island, an island of mystery. Where? In the middle of the Pacific, scattered off the desolate coasts of Northwest Scotland, or hidden far from commercial shipping and too small for speeding planes?
No, this island is right in plain sight and when I am rushing from A to B I have to go around it. The conflict of paths and intended directions for anxious motorists mean they must take it in turn to circle Oroboros fashion until they see their escape route and a way that leads them home, work or to the shops.
It wasn’t always an island of mystery. In fact, it was just a grassy mound; a big one I’ll grant you, but a grassy mound. It is located on the edge of a northern town and interrupts one of those new-fangled dual carriageways designed to pass by saving precious seconds, even the odd minute.
The sight of many a modern battle it sees rage ebb and flow. In the wee small hours it probably sits gloomily anticipating the morning’s coming mayhem. I a was one of those rushing to be somewhere over thirty years ago. I had a journey that was important… well it was to me and in my anxiety to fill a gap on this eternal circle I went into the back of another vehicle. The driver had not read my mind and didn’t fill the gap; so I ran into her. We sorted it out and life moved on. That was in the mid Eighties and today I stopped, not at that spot, but in my mind’s eye and looked across that grassy mound. Only now after thirty-five years the vegetation has gone the way of all nature if it is left alone. The Birch trees tower above the roundabout and it is thick with growth that has been left unattended – thankfully. Even the dual carriageway that heads east from the other side has the same dense Amazonian appearance. No need for dipped headlights there. No light has travelled across the central reservation for years.
So, why is the traffic island an island of mystery? It is so big, so overgrown and coupled with the urgent passing by, left quite alone. I don’t teach anymore as I retired some years ago, but if I did, a picture of the serene and oft ignored mini-forest would make a perfect platform for the imagination. What lays in it’s midst? What secrets does it hide? Or for the hopeful hermit a place of solitude and calm. An oasis you might say except for light is only permitted a fleeting glance; coming only to serve the stretching branches as they soar sun-seeking heavenward for a photosynthesis fix.
It may sound contradictory, but I never want to know the probable banal and desolate nature where only bugs and grubs do feed on the rotting leaves in gloomy calm. It serves my imagination and it will one day be a setting where something is revealed and on that day my island of mystery will like the passing vehicles be long, long gone.