Into this well.

Few weeks ago, during our trip to Munnar, we visited a small plot of land with a tiny cottage that we have there. Its on top of a hill and has all sorts of trees like, kokum, jackfruit, mango, tall slim areca, and cardamom, pepper....to name a few. 

This well reminded me of 'Personal Helicon'.

What fascinated me was this cool, mossy, stone well at the very lowest bounds of the land. Looking into it was delightful, and, immediately brought to mind, Seamus Heaney's poem, Personal Helicon.
The description was exact and I felt thrilled. The tangled weeds and the ferns and, the bit of blue sky trapped inside reflected my own inner self.

For you to read and enjoy, here is the poem,

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.


A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.


Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.


Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
Poem from here

Looking into oneself, what do we find?  Do we consider ourselves too grown up to literally do that?
Not me,I think, because I looked in! :)  We, that is,  my son and I, even sent a bucket down and hauled out the coolest, sweetest water!