The Cold Blue Air

What must a bird see?
And how must it feel?
Does it feel alone?
Lost?
Isolated?
Free?
So high in the sky...
So small in all that air.

Longing

What does it say if you want to experience that pain?
The tears, like crystal beads in the sunshine.
The anguish,
Not physical, of course.

Because the pain means that it matters,
Or mattered.
The pain means you were the difference.

Stunted pathways

The alley was narrow and dark and twisty,
Its walls were high; topped with sharp razor wire,
The sky, a light strip, high above.
Grafetti scrawled on the black bricks,
Expressions of anger, hatred and violence.
The windows above were small and dirty.
Even the plants growing from between the bricks were wrong,
Flowers too dark,
The edges of their leaves too yellow.
Where it led, I could not see.
What lay there waiting for me, I did not know.
I thrust my hands into my pockets,
Tucked my head deeper into my hoody,
And tried to walk faster.

Green Leaves and white clouds

I think it was Bob Geldof who said during an interview that nature was uncompromisingly beautiful on every scale. It's a quote whose sentiment has remained with me since hearing it, and I was reminded of it while standing outside University the other day waiting for a lift.

As cities go Cardiff is remarkably green, and the street outside my department is particularly nice, with plenty of trees as well as an interesting mixture of buildings. But I'm sort of used to it now and its impact on me is not so great. I guess I must have been thinking about something, however, when I happened to look up into the sky.

It's been a while since I had my breath taken away, but the view did just that. It's hard to describe how I found the clouds to be so amazing. Colours are often more vivid after rainfall, so maybe that was it. In any case, the mixture of the deep blue of the sky, the white of the clouds and the green leaves on the trees; the delicate pattern of the clouds themselves, with different sized details, and just the quality of the light was spectacular. I felt cleansed and refreshed, as though I had just run my hands through cold clear water.

Something so... everyday... and yet so beautiful. It would have been too easy to have missed it; to have not looked up, or to have not concentrated enough to pay proper attention to it. How much of the beauty of this world do we miss everyday?

It's all there. All we need to do is look.