On the road between Faugeres and Thezan les Beziers there is a most beautifully flamboyant tree by the side of the road.
Or there appears to be a tree, as you get nearer you realise that it is in fact two trees with their branches intertwined.
I have long admired this and meant many times to stop and photograph them, despite their being by the side of a busy road.

This morning I was finally motivated to take their picture as they have now achieved a certain poetic status.

I am fortunate to have a friend, since my college days who is both a scholar and a poet.

The same friend, Peter Denman, mailed me yesterday to tell me that he had just had somes short poems published on line here

he then told me the background of one of these :
“Philemon and Baucis”, was initially sparked by the sight of twin trees very noticeable by the side of the Bedarieux to Beziers road, just before the turn-off to Thezan.

The trees which are photographed above.

And Peter furthermore adds ;
(And anyway, the P and B story with its emphasis on feeding passing strangers is appropriate for yourself and Sile)

I am amazingly chuffed that we ended up providing (however indirectly) the inspiration for a poem- but before I got too carried away I had to find out something about Philemon and Baucis.

Wikipedia provided the following;

Zeus and Hermes came disguised as ordinary peasants and began asking the people of the town for a place to sleep during that night. They were rejected by all before they came to Baucis and Philemon’s rustic and simple cottage. Though the couple were poor, they showed more pity than their rich neighbors, where “all the doors bolted and no word of kindness given, so wicked were the people of that land.” After serving the two guests food and wine, which Ovid depicts with pleasure in the details, Baucis noticed that although she had refilled her guest’s beechwood cups many times, the wine pitcher was still full. Realizing that her guests were in fact gods, she and her husband “raised their hands in supplication and implored indulgence for their simple home and fare.” Philemon thought of catching and killing the goose that guarded their house and making it into a meal for the guests. But when Philemon went to catch the goose, it ran onto Zeus’s lap for safety. Zeus said that they did not need to slay the goose and that they should leave the town. Zeus said that he was going to destroy the town and all the people who had turned him away and not provided due hospitality. He said Baucis and Philemon should climb the mountain with him and not turn back until they reached the top.

After climbing the mountain to the summit (“as far as an arrow could shoot in one pull”), Baucis and Philemon looked back on the town and saw that it had been destroyed by a flood. However, Zeus had turned Baucis and Philemon’s cottage into an ornate temple. The couple was also granted a wish; they chose to stay together forever and to be guardians of the temple. They also requested that when it came time for one of them to die, the other would die as well. Upon their death, they were changed into an intertwining pair of trees.

And so, finally from Southworld,

is Peter Denmans Poem (which he calls a short verse epigram)

Philemon and Baucis

The grateful god gave what they had in mind: