"I should have brought my camera along." Words that I have used more times than I care to remember, in moments I know that can never again be recaptured with the same intensity of light and life in it. It lives on in my memory, sometimes. But more often than not it fades away, lost forever.
I saw Red Riding Hood this morning. Driving down the small dirt road from the farm on my way to town, I enjoyed the misty greyness of an overcast morning. I always find that greenery seem to shine with an intense vividness against a background of grey sky as opposed to the brilliant blue of a sunny sky. With all the rain we've been blessed with since the beginning of Spring, the veld is lush with grass, the meadows smothered in wildflowers, and the deciduous pin oaks, planes and willows decked in the freshest of newly sprouted green.
From afar the tiny spot of red against this backdrop shone like a traffic light. As I got closer, I saw it clearly. A red pointed hood and what looked like a short cape moving down the road ahead of me. Where the road takes a sharp bend to the right, it passes by a clutch of weeping willows standing ankle deep in the soggy marshland.
I caught up with the apparition short of this turn and thought: "I should have..."
It was a farm worker on his bicycle, on his way to work, wearing a bright red hooded zippered top, dodging and diving down the badly eroded path, the green wall of willow ahead of him, the broody sky above.
I'm capturing it in words today for safekeeping. A very ordinary moment made spectacular by colour.
Matilda
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