Tree With Broken Bough, Arklow, Co Wicklow

Often I think I should be like
The single tree, going nowhere,
Since my own arm could not and would not
Break the other. Yet by my broken bones

I tell new weather.

from Paul Muldoon's 'Wind And Tree'

Mum is now safely, and I think comfortably, ensconsed in a nursing home for two week's 'step-down care', before she comes home. This morning, I was due to collect her at the hospital at 2pm. On my drive back to Dublin from Wexford I just had time for a little detour, near Arklow. They have erected a line of wind-turbines on an offshore sandbar. I had noticed them in the distance on my right, across a few miles of fields, sitting on the steely horizon like faint but distinct stitches joining sea and a lowering sky. The light looked like it might be right to get a good photograph of them, even though I don't have a decent telephoto lens. So I took the nearest turnoff and headed down to the sea.

I pulled into a layby just above the beach, but I couldn't get a really good picture of the turbines; just too damned distant. But on my way back to the main road I saw this cypress (above). There was something about it, both contorted and graceful. At first I shot it from this position, about 50 feet back; I love the way it seems to be reeling the road and fields in, like a big spool. The telegraph wire appears to be either tugging or restraining the tree, which reminds me of the Malamute on a chain I photographed yesterday.

Up close though, you can see more clearly how much damage the tree has sustained. I couldn't decide which of these pictures works best. In the end I chose the one above because it is slightly more unusual. The roadside tree is a cliché in photography (what isn't?). I wanted a different angle than the usual 'classic' shot. What I like about the one I chose is its weird, stark balance, its quietness and violence, the tree seeming to be supporting it's own broken bough like a prosthesis. Both views have a sculptural quality; the more distant view reminds me of a Rodin figure ,while the nearer has something more abstract, Calder perhaps, or some kind of installation. Abstract, figurative, 'conceptual', nature has it all.