On Permaculture Design Courses I have some home work questions I ask people when they’re going away of an evening. This is one of them. The point is merely to help people understand the value of having an enquiring mind- because all permaculture starts with observation… and next comes what did you learn from that. There are scientific answers (there’s no one right answer). But Rosie’s has to be the best ever answer…
Sunset on the beach teaching in the Algarve October 2017
Why is the sky blue? A meditation
Today is an ice day
Not an ice cream soda or a diamond bright day
It’s a sparkling clear through and through and staring out the window at the view day
It’s a puffing mushroom-breath, a stamping and twirling of feet so-as-not-to-freeze day
It’s so cold the clouds have blown-away-towards-the seas day
And the river mirrors back the sun
The sky stretches out in one big yawning smile and
sucks us in like a parachutist in reverse, where the chute
Is a wisp of stray water vapour and we, smaller
than a bird, a dragonfly or dust mote
We surrender into a blessing of blue
It’s empty inside this blue and thats a good thing
for we collide with fewer fellow specks
and gases stay, each to their own layer
wrapped round the Earth in encapsulating hugs
We are at the Angels’ doorway
and their robes remind of indigo and though
we would like to step on in and their hems
are just so close we can almost touch
we turn and their colour seeps into us
Our hands become blue, the sky is a cyanaceous hue
and there is nothing
no nothing whatsoever
we need to do.
by Rosie Mapplebeck 3.2.18
Lovely