The Meeting

He was looking at a flower,

Not with love, but looking at it;

His plough was stopped in the top corner

Of a field he had just roofed.

There was nothing to say that the wind,

Repeating in a tree the unrecorded

Facts of history, had reached further

Than the cold porches of his ear.

He was looking at a flower,

As an animal looks, wondering nothing

About the mystery of its growth.

And why should he? He had grown, too.

With less beauty? Who is to say?

There was a likeness in his eyes,

In both their tenancies of the air’s

Quietness. You could have passed

On the hill road, unsuspecting

That blank encounter in space-time

Of two creatures, each with its load

Of meaning not to be set down.

--R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest