It remains possible to love tainted beauty
A recent Haibun workshop produced several pieces of work but one stood out for me as worth sharing. It was a response to a prompt - to take a line from Endymion, the epic poem which Keats completed while staying at what is now the Burford Bridge hotel on the edge of the River Mole. My mind went to the current issues with rivers I general, and the Mole in particular, but also to the Beaty to be appreciated walking on its banks. The Haibun below, with its mix of prose and haiku, is the result.
See through the trees a little river go * We live in a time when the first words that come to mind when thinking of a river are likely to be pollution, sewage, chemicals, even death. The River Mole, along which Keats may have walked, carries much within its waters – run off from farming, detritus from human life, waste products of various sorts, industrial and domestic, all collected from its various tributaries and joined together to flow into the Thames and thence to the sea. And yet there is still beauty there. Kingfishers can be seen, the sun on the water, the green of the foliage. It remains possible to love tainted beauty. waters flow volunteers dip test tubes a flash of blue *a line from Endymion by John Keats
Image courtesy of Martin Davies under a Creative Commons license