The Magnolia

The old Magnolia tree was planted years before I got to the house, it is in constant competition with the gangly younger black fig tree that encroaches on its space year upon year. But the young fig has rubber limbs that bend and curl around and through the Magnolia. They are rubbery limbs that have knuckles that seem to work like finger joints and are for ever hiding under one another, wringing their long fingers through each other, like old wizened hands. The Magnolia has grown, in response to this constant meddling, straight up, as tall as forever. It blooms in late Summer , not all at once but great big blooms starting at the top, then they make their way down, week-in, week-out and just when I think there will be no blooms left and I’ve missed the boat, well then - more appear.

I waited until the lowest blooms appeared and I got a ladder and cut one back to its stem. I had been watching them and how quickly they wither, they are turning brown at their tips just as soon as they are blooming, I was thinking of Bob Dylan and his lyrics that “It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born”. Ahh Bob, staying up all night listening to Dylan, drawing and smoking, slugging back endless cans of no name beer, thinking you were a grand lad, cause you no longer went for the flagons of cider, yeah, those days. those days when the best ideas were the odd ones and the only art to believe in was surrealism

If I am not driven by light I am the devils own liar, it is the first thing I consider and so when the light was right I brought the flower with me upstairs. I had headed up the to the top floor, like a drunk in an old western movie, stumbling out of a bar with my bottle, a blue glass seltzer bottle, I swung it with such certainty that this was the only prop I needed. “Bought this little puppy in France” I was telling myself - as if I wasn’t fucking there - The guy was telling me it was expensive because this type of blue glass was rare, that aquamarine - hard to come by. And I - trying to keep up with Monsieur bouteille bleue, with my pigeon French, I had learned to speak French like most sea gulls have now learned to read poetry, despite my many years there.

So I sat down on the floor, in the light - and waited, looking at the blue glass I remembered that I had read blue glass can energise water and maybe that’s what I was missing, some water, to help the light sparkle and twinkle, twinkle off a water jug.

And that is how this piece happened, the long shards of light created by the good Autumn we have had and the nonsense of the net curtains splitting and governing the light into its organised lanes, long lanes, running up to the wall and the struggling Magnolia, freshly cut and already dying and the blue seltzer bottle energising the whole scene.

I have Monsieur bouteille bleue to thank for that, he was right, it was exactly what I needed.

Merci Monsieur.