Silver birch at sunrise A rough and rainy night. At sunrise, raindrops pattern the window and the sun transfigures everything. Raindrops shimmer on leaves of gold on a tall and slender birch. And on the dark and leafless birch beyond it. A shimmering sunrise. The effect is sublime, and transitory.
Impossible to catch the full glory on camera. Louring cloud blots out the shimmer, until the next sunburst. Angle and alignment is everything for refracted light: the sun, the raindrop birch, the raindrop glass of the window, and me. Outdoors and looking up into the trees the effect is lost. It's about coincidence.
Listening to Thought For the Day this morning, I was taken back to Liverpool and a Sunday morning exploring in the vicinity of the University Sports Centre.
Impossible to catch the full glory on camera. Louring cloud blots out the shimmer, until the next sunburst. Angle and alignment is everything for refracted light: the sun, the raindrop birch, the raindrop glass of the window, and me. Outdoors and looking up into the trees the effect is lost. It's about coincidence.
Listening to Thought For the Day this morning, I was taken back to Liverpool and a Sunday morning exploring in the vicinity of the University Sports Centre.
I hope tomorrow's sunrise brings such wonder to the commemorations on Armistice Day, a hundred years since the guns of the First World War fell silent. Thought for the Day focused on Captain Noel Chavasse, an army doctor who was awarded the VC twice, first for heroism at the Battle of Guillemont, and again at Passchendaele. His father became Bishop of Liverpool and as I wandered the city I came upon memorials to Captain Noel Chavasse.
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