Amelia Fielden
In the Eye of the Beholder
Pelindaba lavender farm on San Juan island.
Rolling fields of palest purple mist.
A faint perfume in the air.
“Look, a shop,” spots my small grandson. “Maybe they sell ice cream.”
They do, and it’s honey-lavender ice cream made on the farm.
We sit in a garden courtyard, bees busy in the flowering bushes around us. ” This is beautiful,” sighs my granddaughter, gazing into her tub of sweet treat.
I wonder whether there’s an ice cream stand in Monet’s gardens at Giverny. If not, I might hold off on the aesthetic education of these kids for a few more years.
relaxing into this moment . . . their childhood will pass swift as cloud-shadows over the lavender fields
About the Author
Amelia Fielden is Australian. She is a professional Japanese translator and a keen writer of traditional Japanese forms of poetry in English. Her most recent collection is These Purple Years (Ginninderra Press, 2018)