Chris works on my remaining hair. While waiting outside Lloyd's Bank, I watch a cabbage white butterfly's erratic flight over the roof of the abandoned cinema. It must be five storeys high. What is it doing there? Then I notice that a couple of tattered buddleias, otherwise known as butterfly plants, are growing precariously in the angle between the upper part of the brick wall and the concrete perimeter of the flat roof, which mounts behind the cinema's facade. There goes the butterfly staggering into the blue.
In Grosvenor Precinct a man in a baseball cap sits on a bench with a piano accordion. He plays it not very well, but the sound is gentle and unintrusive - there is no amplifier to overwhelm the ears. The tune is slow and sentimental, vaguely Viennese, a little sentimental. As he spreads and narrows his arms and expands and squeezes the box, the passers by seem to be moving in time to the music.
6 comments:
I love the way nature takes over when given
half a chance. Wonder how the butterfly knew to look up there for the plant?
There are so many important agendas besides our own.
(Lost the first comment; hope I remember what I wanted to say.)
Many good things about this post, Plutarch.
First, I like this image of you better than the avatar shot. You appear more relaxed, for one thing.
Second, the cabbage white is one of my favorite butterflies, and this sentence is another gem: "There goes the butterfly staggering into the blue." Staggering is exactly how they flit about.
Finally, I was touched by the scene you painted of the accordion player in the park. You showed him in a poignant moment, with kindness and empathy. Plus, I think we need sentimentality - a touch of it, now and then - in our lives.
The unavoidable long hard look at oneself in the hairdresser's mirror, face immobile and very much exposed, is quite a difficult one, I find. That's a lovely picture though.
I'll carry the accordion player around in my pocket to enjoy too.
Hullo all,
I know from previous correspondence that one of Lucy's favourite poems, and one of mine too, is Robert Graves' Flying Crooked. Do you know it Martha?
The butterfly, a cabbage-white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has - who knows so well as I? -
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and there by guess
and God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift.
I thought of it too, but didn't want to be tiresome!
Great poem, a delight;thank you! (I didn't know it.)
I'm at work at the moment, so this big grin on my face will greet the next visitor and they won't know why it's here, but we three will!
:)
PS: my favorite line is
"He lurches here and there by guess
and God and hope and hopelessness."
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