#59 - Maple Stems

This day last week I couldn't see. It was the day after my eye surgery and my eyes were so painful I could only open them for a few seconds at a time. We took the dog to the park and I sat miserably on a bench in my sunglasses, in the rain, listening to the children play and the dog's collar tags tinkling together as she ran around. It wasn't a day where much appreciation of natural beauty went on except that as we waited to cross the road outside the park I had to open my eyes and I couldn't help noticing the ground was littered with the stems of the maple trees, even through the blur of pain they were such wonderful colours, rich mahogany, crimson and gold on the rainy road. Apparently, once when G K Chesterton had a bad leg he wrote an article entitled, "The Advantages of Having One Leg" in which he claimed, "the way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost." I promised myself last week that when I could see I'd go back and photograph the stems on the road - it's possible that the image isn't as beautiful as it appears to me, coloured as it is by the memory of my heightened appreciation for sight.