Meet you behind the bike-shed.

A blade of grass

8:30 PM, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 .. 2 comments .. Link

It’s a Hazey kind of day. Not a ‘lazy, hazy crazy days of summer’ type of day (although it is a bit), but ‘Hazey’ as relates to our much-missed blogging chum.

He was a great lad for observing the simple minutiae of life, especially nature. I thought about him as I was walking into town today, and there were dozens of swifts down the road, wheeling, swooping, shrieking, darting about and flying straight at the eves of the semis at high speed and suddenly stopping just in time at their nests. It’s a great sight to watch – and further down there were some groups of house martins doing their own free air show.

Then on the way back, later in the day, crows like dark sentinels waited on each lamp post, watching. As I passed one lamp post one even changed his footing and turned round to keep an eye on me – hey, I’ve done nothing, honest…

When I lived in Ireland I once went to a series of philosophy classes and the tutor once asked ‘when was the last time you looked at the roofs and parapets of the buildings outside?’ And he was right – I had often travelled into Dublin, and had been travelling in every Saturday for a few weeks for this course, and yet had never ‘clocked’ the skyline. Of course, now I did and it was like opening your eyes just a little bit more…

I was lying on the grass on the common yesterday during my lunch break, finishing off ‘The God Delusion’, when I started to think of the number of blades of grass on that one common – millions, billions? And then how many atoms were in each blade of grass…billions per blade. Then go the other way – scale up to planet, galaxy, universe… trying to grasp the scale of existence is impossible. It is stunning, awesome, impossible to get a handle on.

And the beauty that lies in just a simple blade of grass…

I was reminded of a poem by Brian Patten, called ‘A Blade of Grass’:

You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.

I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.

You say it is not a poem,
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.

You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.

You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer,

And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.

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Always look up

9:38 PM, Thursday, July 17, 2008 .. Posted by harrygilwood
Maybe thats whats so being a kid is so marvellous- kids are always nearly always having to look up.

In sunderland, at the top of fawcett st towards the bridge above the RBS bank, there are a row of elephants.

Looking down never makes anyone happy.

Edited by harrygilwood on Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 9:39 PM

But...

11:02 PM, Thursday, July 17, 2008 .. Posted by ps
...then you would miss out on the grass...
:-)

Edited by ps on Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 11:03 PM

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Meet you behind the bike-shed.

A blade of grass

Always look up

But...

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