TheBanyanTree: The right kind of sight

[John Bailey]

Sunday September 14, 2003

THE RIGHT KIND OF SIGHT

To Fforestfach, for a well-earned weekly coffee shop session, and from 
thence to Trostre, for food-stuffs. Beautiful views over the estuary, with 
half a full tide laying a flat, glimmering shield over the wide mud flats. 
I really fancied stopping for a while but Graham was adamant that we should 
press on.

"I've got a house to get ready for the market," he said. "Nothing to stop 
you coming out any time you want."

Which is, without any doubt at all, perfectly reasonable, and I'll not 
argue. I suspect that I'll be urged to absent myself when the project is 
particularly messy but most of the time I intend to be available for the 
purpose of making tea and answering "could you hold this for a minute?" 
calls. Not to forget being here to answer the inevitable:  "I can't find my 
xxxx. Have you seen it anywhere?"

So, back home to another lovely afternoon in the sun. Charlie our cyclamen 
is doing splendidly again this year, all little noddy nuns-caps dancing in 
the breeze. From the original single corm, twenty-six years ago, he's grown 
to fill two large pots, and he will need splitting and repotting again next 
year or the year after. We're hoping that the next garden will have a spot 
where we can safely plant a few corms to naturalise and spread out. I can't 
imagine anything more attractive than a couple of silver birches with 
bluebells growing beneath and between, to welcome in the spring, followed 
by white cyclamen to nod in the summer. Autumn and winter could be covered 
by anenomes, possibly, though there are many alternatives. Hey ho. We'll 
have to see what kind of garden we get next time. There will be a garden, 
on that we are decided. Graham wants to grow vegetables as well as flowers 
and I want to plant a couple of trees to make a woody arbour for my old age.

The world is filled with beautiful things, many of them easy to take for 
granted, or to overlook entirely. You need only to lift up your eyes and to 
be gifted with the right kind of sight to see them:


         GIFT OF SIGHT

         I had long known the diverse tastes of the wood,
         Each leaf, each bark, rank earth from every hollow;
         Knew the smells of bird's breath and of bat's wing;
         Yet sight I lacked: until you stole upon me,
         Touching my eyelids with light finger-tips.
         The trees blazed out, their colours whirled together,
         Nor ever before had I been aware of sky.

         Robert Graves (1895-1985)


--
John Bailey   Carmarthenshire, Wales
journal of a writing man
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>