The Bright Field

The folks in the house by the church have opened their shutters and are hauling the lemon trees out of the greenhouse and arranging them around the pool. Sophie pauses to watch. Curiosity sated we continue through the village, turn left at the crossroads and stand at the top of the ridge looking out towards the mountains. Then the sun comes out, the hawthorn trees shine and there in the valley below - the doe - with not one, but two, fawns. The sight makes me laugh out loud . 

The arrival of these new neighbours an event too small for a diary but too important to go completely unrecorded. 

Here is a fitting Saturday morning poem by a great Welsh poet.

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through 
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness 
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R.S.Thomas