THE BUSH
I know that bush,
Moses; there are many of them
in Wales in the autumn, braziers
where the imagination
warms itself. I have put off
pride and, knowing the ground
holy, lingered to wonder
how it is that I do not burn
and yet am consumed.
And in this country
of failure, the rain
falling out of a black
cloud in gold pieces there
are none to gather,
I have thought often
of the fountain of my people
that played beautifully here
once in the sun’s light
like a tree undressing.
-R. S. Thomas
Gladsome Lights 
Such an eloquent testimonial to essentially the passing of a country where after ruining its beauty, the extensive railroad network of the industrial age that could have kept the inaccessible inlands open was ripped up and scrapped, so basically those lands have been abandoned except for a few off-the-grid people from other parts of Britain and perhaps a few die-hard Welsh farmers still persevering in some way. It reminds me in a different way of the land my uncle farmed in eastern Ontario province Canada with its economy ruined and its farmhouses tarted up and turned into million-dollar second or third or fourth vacation homes of wealthy Torontonians who now country ski over the stony fields and small forests.
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Wow, love the mosaic.
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