849 Naval Air Squadron

    The Bright Field

                     RS Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illumine a small field for a while,
and gone my way and forgotten it.
But that was the pearl of great price,
the one field that had the treasure in it.
I realise now
that I must give all that I have to possess it.

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past.
It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush,
to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once,
but is eternity that awaits you.

            

This poem was read by Lieutenant Commander David Lambourne at the service held on Ark Royal.

R S Thomas, who died in 2000 at the age of 87, was a pre-eminent Welsh poet who is remembered principally outside Wales for his religious poetry. He was a clergyman and the son of a sea Captain

Picture by kind permission of Charlie Waite, celebrated landscape photographer.

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