Matinee

Mid-afternoon. Catching an impromptu matinee and daring to describe its splendour. Chance meeting of elements and verdant life.

The scene is as simple as it is beautiful. An ensemble of air currents conducted through nature’s score. Tall, unmown August grasses bow gracefully in unison. Cones, needles, leaves leap and fall in aerial ballet. Solid deciduous and venerable coniferous present their arches and alcoves for energetic gusts to vibrate and resonate. A background percussion of fences, benches, branches and stakes stretch out a creaking tempo. Wind chimes echo melodies into the eclogue.

Looking into the frame upon this symphonic hymn to late summer, everything seems to move as if underwater. Cucumber, chartreuse, olive, plum and lime. Oils smearing themselves in a rhythmic ecstasy of aquatic abandon. Marble luminosity and jade shadow occupying and reoccupying one another’s spaces, and folding and dissolving into the deep distance. Sea suspended in air. It stops thought. Amazes.

Right in the centre, a sudden splash of copper steals breath itself. The dying blossom of a lilac, grafted to an apple. A tree I saved and replanted in some other time. Into the colour, light and sound it burns like larva breaking out through the earth’s crust.