online: 14 may 2010 modified: 17 may, 2 july 2010 20 may 2010 at pond 4
seven sisters ponds
...a warm summer evening... serious cricket on the green... pond 4 is nearly filled with new rushes now up to 1.5 metres high...
...on the way here i ate sandwiches on a seat with a man and a woman who'd lived here for 50 years... did they know the person whose name is inscribed on the seat?... no they didn't but 'all good persons are our friends' he said (he wore religious costume)...
...the water surface of pond one is smooth and clear of vegetation... disturbed only by the minute waves of insects moving...
...and all this time a thrush or blackbird has been singing nearby...
...this afternoon i re-read Daniel Albright's introduction to the Poems of W B Yeats... and some of the poems with A's most informative notes... it seems Yeats wrote little of nature and much of culture, of myth, and of people... all as components of a connective vision that includes himself as composed of and composing all these things in a unity that attempts to heal disunities that in the end destroy... but as i write those words i feel they do not suffice... and the poems are marvellous...
...the light's begun to fade... two people approach and cease to talk when they notice my presence... one walks with a crutch, perhaps two...
...and now i am alone again...
...directly above is a half moon in blue sky seen amongst twigs leaves and flying insects and a bird that flies across too fast for me to identify... i hear an aircraft beyond the trees... and if i direct my thoughts towards those of WB i write of the moon as both mythical and realistic presence... the bird still sings in this spot where the physical realities could accommodate visions of perhaps Merlin or Myrddyn dressed i imagine in a long coat that is blue and yellow... but so faint that he disappears before the primary imagination* prevails...
...the moon appears to have moved and is now half concealed by birch leaves and the secondary imagination is gone...
...as it gets darker i wonder if a night walk through the forest will increase or decrease any visions that may appear in this place (if such exists)?
*Coleridge's distinction between primary and secondary imagination (Biogrphia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by George Watson, Everymans Library Dutton, New York, 1975. pages 164-7 )
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