It is the turning aside

Today is another poem, that simply has to be added to my collection here. I have been following Sarah Clarkson’s poetry readings on Instagram - see @sarahwanders if you’d like to also - which are all lovely, but today’s was particularly appealing. Any familiar readers will see why. It’s called The Bright Field by RS Thomas, who was apparently an Anglican minister in Wales.

It’s a shame I can never get a photo of it as I am driving, but there is a road I drive often to and from my house, which skirts down the edge of Canberra, and as you go up or down the hill you gaze out over rolling foreground hills to the mountains beyond. Late in the afternoon it is one of the most beautiful drives I know. Sometimes as it goes down towards the mountains the sun is sending rays of splendour through the clouds, and the vision, for whatever reason, transports me to the final chapters of the Narnia series, and I feel I might just drive right on into heaven (and if I stare out the side window for too long at the glory I just might one day). So this poem slots right into that little corner of my life and imagination.

THE BRIGHT FIELD
by R.S. Thomas

I have seen the sun break through 
to illuminate a small field 
for a while, and gone my way 
and forgotten it. But that was the 
pearl of great price, the one field that had 
treasure in it. I realise now 
that I must give all that I have 
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after 
an imagined past. It is the turning 
aside like Moses to the miracle 
of the lit bush, to a brightness 
that seemed as transitory as your youth 
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

From Laboratories of the Spirit, published by MacMillan