Beauty assumes its thousand-sided guise
Each face unique and yet beauty’s quintessence
Each new encounter takes me by surprise
Each raw with passion like that of adolescence
In everything can be found beauty’s heart
From beauty we are never far apart
I tried to pay a little more attention to the aesthetic today as I entered the park, a mixture of wispy high cirrus and low hanging cumulus decorating the sky as the Wood Pigeons coo’d and the Green Woodpeckers yaffled below. Blackbirds were also in voice, their performances seemingly even more elaborately musical than usual. As I crested the hill of Long Meadow my eyes were drawn to a small slight creature, both in body and voice. A Goldcrest skipping through the hedge as it sung its share of the dawn chorus.
I hadn’t planned on passing through the Large Copse this morning but the strains of a Song Thrush drew me inexorably onwards. A small cluster of Lord’s and Ladie’s were busy annexing a section of the footpath, marching in past the log borders and planting their flag squarely amid the bark mulch.
Beyond the cover of the Black Pines I noticed the scattered leaves of Holm Oak about the Meadow, no doubt the result of the recent high winds. Chaffinches and Goldfinches were in voice, alongside yet more Song Thrushes. As I probed deeper their notes gave way to those of Skylarks, their reeling performances hypnotically beautiful to the ear. All these sounds combined with more calls from Great and Blue Tits as I walked past the Upper Gulley, creating an almost rainforest like experience. I enjoyed it a lot.
Weaving my way through scrub on the Downlands I startled a Roe Deer concealed within a dome of Blackthorn and Wild Clematis. I caught the sound of its large body moving away alongside glimpses of White and Brown. Lower down by the Clifftops I spied Shags, Rock Pipits and after some searching a Peregrine Falcon, its sleek curved body tracing the surface of the sea.
Happy valentine’s day folks; enjoy the poem. Ladies; you know where to find me.