I Love the Ugliness in Your Beauty

Photo credit: Jean Rees Lyons

I had to write to tell you how, one day, making the usual journey home across Lock Ruel to Largs on the converted trawler, Heather, I noticed you standing in the landscape. You looked unreal against a backdrop of bracken and scrubland.

Transfixed, holding my woolly, purple hat in place against the breeze chasing a squall against the side of the boat, I sensed the power of your outstretched limbs. I was lost to your knowingness of me.

I disembarked and made my way to the bothie on the hillside but you were still with me, trapped by my imagination. Yet, on river banks, flood plains,  jungle paths, here, there you belong, stripped naked by history, wind and weather. Verb-green leavings drape your tangled, half-visible roots like dancers on a sprung forest floor.

Living death defying life forever.

When I imagine other trees, those seasoned adorners of hillside and valley I find it is you that I admire, praise, long to be with, to watch you shapeshifting the clouds.     

I love the ugliness of your beauty as they cut through your bloodwood, destroy our universal breath and the flora canopy to reveal a cathedral rose window at the heart of your ancient rings.

For you are myth and myth-maker

You are my passion

You create beauty out of ugliness

You are Earth’s guardian

My passion


Jean Rees-Lyons

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