A View Of Beauty
We biked up to a small town called Fontaine de Vaucluse. I say up because it was upstream on the Sorgue river which has its source there, welling out of a spring at the base of the Luberon Mountains.
An earlier poem about this same scene is here, just below. I published it last August.
https://westonpparker.substack.com/p/the-light
See what I mean about the light?
A View Of Beauty I saw that view again today. It had gotten more beautiful, far beyond the grip of my feeble memory and now, here in its presence, surpassing my imagination. It hadn’t gotten more beautiful, it simply always was. The light amongst the churning bubbles is so brilliantly white that a passing mallard duck floats like a small vessel, brown planks amidship, iridescent green at the bow and curved deep blue at the stern. The mayflies are out in a swarm yet it is only mid April. Below them the trout are pooling. The wisteria is falling all over itself, cascading down the bank, making an absolute fool of anyone nearby. Only for the sake of brevity will I try to ignore these sycamores draping their pale spring leaves everywhere around us, exactly like a divine canopy making a speckled spectacle of us all. We cannot help ourselves. The light is here and so we all must come, else we might never know why we exist at all. No one ever said beauty was never brief enough. That is how you know you have seen it, because when it passes some small part of us does too.
Trying to describe divinity or maybe hold onto it. The mallard passed through the bubbles in the background.
and me explaining how much snow has just landed back in Colorado.
This is the posture of someone who is well aware of his luck in being able to see such beauty.
https://westonpparker.substack.com/p/the-light
The source of Sorgue River is the biggest spring in France, 5th biggest spring in the world at 18,000 liters per second and year round temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit. The river is only 19 miles long from its source to where it joins the much larger Ouvéze River.
From it’s source, the Sorgue River travels 4 miles (as the crow flies) to the town of L’Isle Sur La Sorgue. When it hits the town, it parts and surrounds the town on all sides while passing through several canals all over town. I think it has about 18 waterwheels, some of which still turn. It has two markets that occur on Thursday and Sunday that date back to 1596. I found a header in town with a 1437 date on it.
Beautiful, Wes, and the last verse? Perfect!
A marvelous expression of beauty!