Deceptive beauty

Farewell Rijmenam. The title, in translation, of a poem I wrote the day after this photograph was taken. We visited Fa (middle) and Agnès Claes who lived in a farmhouse at Rijmenam. Shortly after they moved to Bruges. Chief editor of the literary magazine Kruispunt, John Heuzel (second left) and his wife Marie-Thérèse van Dycke (far right) came from Bruges that day. For years Fa and I contributed to Kruispunt which has since gone out of circulation. It was the first literary magazine in the Dutch language that published poems by my late wife Stella Timonidou (second right). It was a reunion of good friends. Something to do more often. We did, but Stella wasn't present at the Kruispunt farewell party in 2009, when the final edition was published. There's no fighting against the cruelty of nature. Nature which looked so beautiful that day in Rijmenam. Beauty which is too often deceptive.