May Flowers

I'm just back from the sisters adventure. The Western skyscapes and lolling hills still haunt my thought, the long miles of song, of green spilled floodlike over mountain and plain, and the thoughts sparked by all that color are simmering on the back burner of my thought. A post shall soon be ready to serve. I shall also soon be writing about why, in a week, I'm deactivating my Facebook account. The more I contemplate it, the more reasons I conjure.

But for now, because I haven't even unpacked yet and the ebullient grace of these peonies and the king's ransom richness of these tulips are too much to keep to myself, I give you a slice of what I saw in the marvelous Pikes Market. And with it, a poem for spring.

 Spring

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

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