By: Blonde One
In this time of staying close to home I have noticed much more than I would have done previously. I have walked new lanes, found new views and admired all sorts of things that I might otherwise have walked straight past. It has reminded me of one of my favourite poems, written by Norman MacCaig, An Ordinary Day. It reminds use to notice how “extraordinary, ordinary things are”. We are invited to notice how ducks waddle, how weeds in water move and how bees fly through the air.

What can you notice when you next go out for your once a day exercise?

Enjoy!

“An Ordinary Day,” by Norman MacCaig

I took my mind a walk
Or my mind took me a walk–
Whichever was the truth of it.

The light glittered on the water
Or the water glittered in the light.
Cormorants stood on a tidal rock

With their wings spread out,
Stopping no traffic. Various ducks
Shilly-shallied here and there

On the shilly-shallying water.
An occasional gull yelped. Small flowers
Were doing their level best

To bring to their kerbs bees like
Ariel charabancs. Long weeds in the clear
Water did Eastern dances, unregarded

By shoals of darning needles. A cow
Started a moo but thought
Better of it–And my feet took me home

And my mind observed to me,
Or I to it, how ordinary
Extraordinary things are or

How extraordinary ordinary
Things are, like the nature of the mind
And the process of observing.