news from a strange planet

an hour before sunset and little r helps me collect some flowers; we don't know the names of any of them and so have to go by their weirdness or size (in her case). she blows at a dandelion, not knowing yet the timeless human convention of making a wish as one does so. the natural life of flowers on earth intermingling with human history, desires, expectations. at other times people have held buttercups under your chin as a proof of love...

we walk across the wooden bridge, full of cobwebs but no spiders. the Roding in full flow, dark and brooding as usual, bending back the tall grasses. r thinks she sees a fish but it's only the glimmer of the late sun on a ripple. "strange that you should remember fish at this particular moment in time," I said.

"why? don't you know that i always think of fish no matter where i am, no matter the time of day."

there's no arguing with her when she's in that mood and so i let it pass.

we pass back and forth across the bridge several times. "this doesn't go anywhere," she muses. strange, because you'd always thought of bridges and how they facilitate movement. but when you think of it, there they are, fixed in time.the world, a static bridge, and i have no desire to be anywhere else, nor any need for names.

~~~

"The Puritans have stern faces; but their eyes have looked on life."

"I came to recognize a certain humour, flippancy even, as a sign of the higest seriousness."

'And if there was asingle day when we did not meet

I would sit listless, my mind in a tangle of gloom

To think we are now thousands of miles apart

Lost like clouds on high where many high winds blow,

What chance is there of ever meeting again.'