Words and Thoughts, for Life
“The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings
from Wordsworth, ‘An Evening Walk’
His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings…
While tender cares and mild domestic loves
With furtive watch pursue her as she moves,
The female with a meeker charm succeeds,
And her brown little-ones around her leads”
Not much can be added to Wordsworth’s beautiful lines about swans, except for this photograph of a beautiful swan family, matching much of Wordsworth’s description, recently seen at Atcham.
My friend, the heron,
Does not like to be photographed.
He sees me pause
Camera raised
Chuckles to himself
And flies off in jubilation
As if his nature
Was just too sacred
For any kind
Of visual revelation.
~
It’s the daffodil time of year in the UK – that wonderful, brief time, when yellows trumpet at us from every patch of green around. And especially so in Shropshire.
Shakespeare wrote about the daffodils…
“…that come before the swallow dares
And take the winds of March with beauty”
from ‘A Winter’s Tale’
And of course Wordsworth once wandered…
“…lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils…”
The photograph is of the entrance to Attingham Park, Shropshire, taken from the other side of the road in Atcham, where the daffodils are looking as beautiful as they always do every year.
Truly a gateway of golden daffodils to the spring!
How often do we stop and simply look and appreciate what is all around us?
I recently stopped on my commute and took some photographs of a most beautiful sunset in the village of Atcham in Shropshire.
In many ways it was an ordinary sunset, if there is such a thing as an ordinary sunset!
But when you take photographs, it does make you pay more than usual attention to composition, shapes and colours. And the more I looked, the more I noticed.
Not only were the clouds such beautiful, changing hues of orange, red and grey, but many were also, as in the photograph, reflected beautifully in the stillness of the Severn, where I could also see the perfect reflected silhouettes of trees.
It was a very memorable few minutes.
And it reminded me of the power of how good it is to be deliberately mindful in the way we use our amazing sense of sight.
It’s a very worthwhile exercise just to take a few moments every day to look mindfully at our surroundings. Really loook at details, shapes, colours. See what you notice! See if you, too, are sometimes inspired!
St. Eata’s church in Atcham is the ONLY church in the UK dedicated to St. Eata, who was Bishop based on the beautiful Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne from 681-685 A.D.! And how appropriate that this pigeon posed for me recently, on the pedestrian bridge at Atcham.
Nature speaks so clearly in Shropshire – as it does all over the world. St. Francis of Assisi preached to the bird – he was in touch with the natural world. Perhaps churches today can help call us back to nature – creation – like this pigeon did for me today!
Lif4Gd 