It’s still a dark and dreary world out there. I’m working on finding my spring lift, although I normally enjoy the winter time. The politics of the US have overwhelmed me I’m sorry to say. Until yesterday. The damp, rainy day here in Maine was emblazoned with people out marching, from tiny towns to the state capitol and everywhere in between. Spring has sprung!
Hi Lee - my little city in Southern Maine understood the assignment and came out despite the weather! I hope when the season of the mud gives over to sunlit blue skies will give you the spring lift you need. 😎
I can totally sympathize - this time, there, and worldwide, is a scary, societal unravelling. After completing cancer treatment recently, I was helped when I read ...'when the minutes are hard, look for the moments'.There are many of these moments if we are able to look for them. During such vulnerable times, 'moments' might be all we have to help ground us. Deep peace to you.
Peace to you, Julie, and congratulations on completing your treatment. I also completed cancer treatment six months ago, and looking for the moments is a continuing coping strategy for me.
"When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;"
As graduate of environmental science I love the juxtaposition of the human label 'weed' with its negative connotation and the vital energy afforded of the season. Where nature, the Divine if you will knows no distinction between plant favoured or despised.
I also love the sound of this line with its alliteration, aspirated 'h' in wheel and the 'sh' at beginning and end of words. It gives to me a moistening in the mouth and the idea of effortless rebirth and growth. A mouth watering line.
I, likewise, was struck by this. Perhaps because I read Barbara Crooker's poem, Promise, this week and the last line of her poem, "Even dandelions glitter in the lawn, a handful of golden change," seems to go hand in hand with those long, lovely, and lush weeds.
Yes, I love those first dandelions. Weeds, perhaps... but so necessary for those little bees who meander from one bit of gold to the next!
This is my favorite line too - it makes me think of the exuberant branches of bougainvillea that reach hopefully for the sky in the hottest and most difficult (for me) weather here in New Delhi — and then explode in luxurious blooms.
"A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning..." is one of many which I lingered over as well. This annual cycle more or less forces us to recognize (and seek) these longer natural rhythms from which we sprang ourselves, and which continue to nourish us if we notice. It's also hopeful in that Nature will survive us however, despite our abject ignorance and cruelties. Life will live, in some form, with or without us. This is both sad and happy at once for me. But the re-minding, yes please!
Here’s the juice and joy where I live. The barn re-siding proceeds apace. The local sawmill delivered lumber this week — now run by the son of the man who started the business due to his love of traditional ways. The little lambs and kids at the farm down the road are discovering the world on legs that grow steadier by the day. Daffodils are trumpeting beneath budding maples and beneath them a carpet of blue Siberian squill. At Caffe Lena (via a tele subscription) Rachel Sumner and Traveling Light sang songs old and new in beautiful harmonies last night. A musical rendition of a poem of Johnny Cash’s felt like spring, though I am not sure why. Maybe it’s that the song made me feel his music and spirit is still blooming. Or maybe just something about the juicy mix of old and new.
Hey there all, I love the whole thing. It's delicious. It was hard to read silently, so I switched to reading the sonnet aloud, and my mouth and mind burst with the turning of my tongue.
I especially liked how the weeds even turn, partake in this springtime bursting with lushness. Where I went to college, tumbleweeds would wield their way down the street in Spring, and I, on a bike, I would have to maneuver around them in the bike lane on my way to class. The turning of the weeds reminded me of that, even "ugly" or "unwanted" things burst with exuberance during spring.
I ordered Kitchen Hymns From Fabulosa Books in the Castro in SF when I was there last week. It arrived a few days ago. My friend, a chaplain, is thinking of designing trainings that bridge the gap between disaster experiences and helper culture. I thought a lot about the section on Jesus and Persephone, I won't give too much away, after he told me about his undertaking, so to speak.
Good day to you all, and thanks for the Hopkins here, Pádraig. For me, this poem is a quick immersion into spring, and I, like you, was struck with the juice and joy line. In the Northern hemisphere where I live, where white winters can be long, the first blades of grass that are even a tiny bit green inspire deep breaths of hope. I've been thinking for the past few months (and perhaps years) about the value of art in such times as we live. I remember during the pandemic, a potter I follow on socials wondered what she could do in the face of the collective trauma we were experiencing. I suggested she keep making her art. It made so much sense to me then, because I benefitted from seeing her continued practice of toil and beauty. It settled me and provided some kind of structure or habit, as well as joy in the beauty of her end product.
I came across a quote the other day that speaks into this, I think. German painter Gerhard Richter noted that "Art is the highest form of hope" in an exhibition catalogue from 1982. At the moment, I'm ruminating on this idea, chewing on it and sucking the juice out of it, hoping he is right.
I love that Hopkins poem, love his poetry in general, I remember it clearly from my school days. Long and lovely and lush. He brought alliterative verse to life for me back then, not just as a poetic device, but a sound of music in my ears.
So many lovely lines. Love your highlighted line too; 'What is all this juice and all this joy?' I think poetry and writing and art might help save the world, make it a better home in which to live out our lives. But I think writing helps us all get closer to Truth.
I wrote this one this week. See what you or your readers thing. I'll put a full stop in the stanza breaks and I'm not sure comments hold their shape. Audio read in post link below.
.
'Matador'
.
who invited a sunset so magnetic—
to reflect upon a neighbour's hoarding board?
.
I hope I die—
lit up like this
.
standing in the arena
holding up my cape to the stamping, fuming bull
.
say your name, if you come this way, bull—
I say, to elicit a response
.
fever from an underworld
stings of misshapen blame
.
I will not kill you, bull—
I will make you say your name
.
I'll wrap my arms around— so you know how strong I am
"The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush"
I love that description of the descending rush, the urgency of the beauty in our world. I'm feeling joyful about the pervasiveness of nature, whether or not we are ready for it.
"The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush." -a gorgeously engorged line of poetry. Spring, where I live, lasts about a week. The daffodils and crocuses sprout up in that week and die off about as quickly. The sky, which has been grayish and cloudful, gives up the ghost of winter and gives the sun a chance to blue the sky for about 7 days in a row. It is the most glorious week of the year before the humidity of summer sets in. It is almost here. Hope for a better world seems more possible with a sunlit blue sky. The "descending blue...all in a rush" feels like my idea of heaven on earth. Which is to say, a place chock full of kindness, understanding, love, and embracing of differences in the wide swath of humanity. With heaven so close, how can we not hope for a better world? Happy Spring to all who celebrate it. 💜
I must challenge Hopkin's notion of a sullied Eden with a bit of John Muir that always comforts me in hard times:
"I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day."
~ John Muir, "Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon," Overland Monthly, August, 1873; and John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938), page 72.
Have a hard agree with Muir here, since Eden is a human construct about how we are both creatures and creators. All Creation follows its own imperatives and meanings; we can but witness in our short lives and more or less ineptly try to explain it to ourselves and then each other. Even Muir's phrase "creation's dawn" and "half made" implies a linear model of thought (beginning, middle, end) -- when nature is inarguably cyclical. This leads me to imagine we came to this party through looking at the earth's horizon from our own two feet. It does look like a beginning, middle, and end can be trod. But if you once start trudging, you will eventually find you walk an enormous circle to return from where you began.
Yes! I agree with you about Muir's linear view, NMC. That bugs me too because I also embrace the cyclical experience of time.
My favorite part of this quote is actually, "The morning stars still sing together …" Ever since I was a teenager, that phrase has helped me question my culture's assumption that a natural, global harmony has been irretrievably lost. It may seem obscured at times, but it remains beyond corruption. I wake up every morning trying to understand this teaching and hear that star song.
“Spring” is my word magnet. I simply cannot see beyond the feathery iron filings of romping newness, boldly greens, drooping snow piles, and sprigging stems. Can there be a more bounteous word. “Spring”. Hallelujah and amen
another note - sometimes when I'm writing, I play Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight" over and over. Folx, do yourself a solid, go to the link Padraig posted, "Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, The Unsung Collective." It inspires me. Maybe it will you too.
I very much love the juice and joy line too but also appreciate this: When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
I have long found some weeds beautiful. I know these wheels. There is something festive and celebratory about them. Like fireworks on the ground. It could have been so many of the vibrant spring flowers exalted here but he chose the weed and put it in early. I like that.
“and thrush / Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring / The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing”
I adore these lines! They give me an inkling of how and why bird song has rescued me a million times: the rescue comes out of nowhere, is instantaneous, plus utterly impossible to resist.
Music has also been the juice and joy getting me through these confounding weeks.
Funnily enough the Max Richter reimagining of Vivaldi has been on repeat this week in my ears, as part of a mixtape of melancholy classical music I recently published. The hope with each mixtape is to connect people to moments of calm and healing that only music can provide:
This has been my sprintime "go to" once again, and aptly enough is called "The Rise." WARNING: contains words from Blake, and kick ass bagpipes. Turn it up!
Check this out, too. I'm not much for classical music but this Scottish medley (live) is utterly stunning, utterly speechlessly beautiful. Music is what language only wishes it could be.
(sorry if this is a duplicate post, had issues getting it in the right place).
It’s still a dark and dreary world out there. I’m working on finding my spring lift, although I normally enjoy the winter time. The politics of the US have overwhelmed me I’m sorry to say. Until yesterday. The damp, rainy day here in Maine was emblazoned with people out marching, from tiny towns to the state capitol and everywhere in between. Spring has sprung!
Hi Lee - my little city in Southern Maine understood the assignment and came out despite the weather! I hope when the season of the mud gives over to sunlit blue skies will give you the spring lift you need. 😎
Thank you
I can totally sympathize - this time, there, and worldwide, is a scary, societal unravelling. After completing cancer treatment recently, I was helped when I read ...'when the minutes are hard, look for the moments'.There are many of these moments if we are able to look for them. During such vulnerable times, 'moments' might be all we have to help ground us. Deep peace to you.
Peace to you, Julie, and congratulations on completing your treatment. I also completed cancer treatment six months ago, and looking for the moments is a continuing coping strategy for me.
Thankyou
Fun to read this comment from another Mainer -- I was part of the powerful and energized crowd at the capitol in Augusta!
Thank you!
For me it's:
"When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;"
As graduate of environmental science I love the juxtaposition of the human label 'weed' with its negative connotation and the vital energy afforded of the season. Where nature, the Divine if you will knows no distinction between plant favoured or despised.
I also love the sound of this line with its alliteration, aspirated 'h' in wheel and the 'sh' at beginning and end of words. It gives to me a moistening in the mouth and the idea of effortless rebirth and growth. A mouth watering line.
I, likewise, was struck by this. Perhaps because I read Barbara Crooker's poem, Promise, this week and the last line of her poem, "Even dandelions glitter in the lawn, a handful of golden change," seems to go hand in hand with those long, lovely, and lush weeds.
Yes, I love those first dandelions. Weeds, perhaps... but so necessary for those little bees who meander from one bit of gold to the next!
Love “a mouth watering line” —so apt, so “through the green fuse,” so in keeping with the musicality of GMH’s verse-symphonies!
This is my favorite line too - it makes me think of the exuberant branches of bougainvillea that reach hopefully for the sky in the hottest and most difficult (for me) weather here in New Delhi — and then explode in luxurious blooms.
Ah,
"A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning"
How this reminds of a universe is so much greater than our political whims
even when the atmosphere is a weave of satellites
the oceans ring with the sound of machines
But the air, sometimes is sweet
"A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning..." is one of many which I lingered over as well. This annual cycle more or less forces us to recognize (and seek) these longer natural rhythms from which we sprang ourselves, and which continue to nourish us if we notice. It's also hopeful in that Nature will survive us however, despite our abject ignorance and cruelties. Life will live, in some form, with or without us. This is both sad and happy at once for me. But the re-minding, yes please!
Here’s the juice and joy where I live. The barn re-siding proceeds apace. The local sawmill delivered lumber this week — now run by the son of the man who started the business due to his love of traditional ways. The little lambs and kids at the farm down the road are discovering the world on legs that grow steadier by the day. Daffodils are trumpeting beneath budding maples and beneath them a carpet of blue Siberian squill. At Caffe Lena (via a tele subscription) Rachel Sumner and Traveling Light sang songs old and new in beautiful harmonies last night. A musical rendition of a poem of Johnny Cash’s felt like spring, though I am not sure why. Maybe it’s that the song made me feel his music and spirit is still blooming. Or maybe just something about the juicy mix of old and new.
Hey there all, I love the whole thing. It's delicious. It was hard to read silently, so I switched to reading the sonnet aloud, and my mouth and mind burst with the turning of my tongue.
I especially liked how the weeds even turn, partake in this springtime bursting with lushness. Where I went to college, tumbleweeds would wield their way down the street in Spring, and I, on a bike, I would have to maneuver around them in the bike lane on my way to class. The turning of the weeds reminded me of that, even "ugly" or "unwanted" things burst with exuberance during spring.
I ordered Kitchen Hymns From Fabulosa Books in the Castro in SF when I was there last week. It arrived a few days ago. My friend, a chaplain, is thinking of designing trainings that bridge the gap between disaster experiences and helper culture. I thought a lot about the section on Jesus and Persephone, I won't give too much away, after he told me about his undertaking, so to speak.
Yes! I always feel that Hopkins must be read aloud!
Definitely!
thanks for the idea to read aloud!
Good day to you all, and thanks for the Hopkins here, Pádraig. For me, this poem is a quick immersion into spring, and I, like you, was struck with the juice and joy line. In the Northern hemisphere where I live, where white winters can be long, the first blades of grass that are even a tiny bit green inspire deep breaths of hope. I've been thinking for the past few months (and perhaps years) about the value of art in such times as we live. I remember during the pandemic, a potter I follow on socials wondered what she could do in the face of the collective trauma we were experiencing. I suggested she keep making her art. It made so much sense to me then, because I benefitted from seeing her continued practice of toil and beauty. It settled me and provided some kind of structure or habit, as well as joy in the beauty of her end product.
I came across a quote the other day that speaks into this, I think. German painter Gerhard Richter noted that "Art is the highest form of hope" in an exhibition catalogue from 1982. At the moment, I'm ruminating on this idea, chewing on it and sucking the juice out of it, hoping he is right.
I love that Hopkins poem, love his poetry in general, I remember it clearly from my school days. Long and lovely and lush. He brought alliterative verse to life for me back then, not just as a poetic device, but a sound of music in my ears.
So many lovely lines. Love your highlighted line too; 'What is all this juice and all this joy?' I think poetry and writing and art might help save the world, make it a better home in which to live out our lives. But I think writing helps us all get closer to Truth.
I wrote this one this week. See what you or your readers thing. I'll put a full stop in the stanza breaks and I'm not sure comments hold their shape. Audio read in post link below.
.
'Matador'
.
who invited a sunset so magnetic—
to reflect upon a neighbour's hoarding board?
.
I hope I die—
lit up like this
.
standing in the arena
holding up my cape to the stamping, fuming bull
.
say your name, if you come this way, bull—
I say, to elicit a response
.
fever from an underworld
stings of misshapen blame
.
I will not kill you, bull—
I will make you say your name
.
I'll wrap my arms around— so you know how strong I am
stand a little lower if you need more dignity
.
open up— aren't you lonely?
my sword turned soul will ask
.
I might die—
lit up like this
.
matador's cape— I.
.
-------------------
.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theseainme/p/matador?r=46rss&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That's my favorite line, too, and I wrote a triolet using Hopkin's lines (in my book Wayfarers):
Bone-house Song
What’s all this juice and all this joy,
bounding spirit in the bone-house?
Where from and bound, I wonder, where?
What’s all this joy and all this juice?
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty
share life as life does air.
All this — this juice, this joy — unbinds
the spirit in the bone-house.
Struck by --
"The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush"
I love that description of the descending rush, the urgency of the beauty in our world. I'm feeling joyful about the pervasiveness of nature, whether or not we are ready for it.
This is mine too. I've been watching the trees as they seem to swell with dap, blush and then burst into blossom. And meet by that rush of blue!
"The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush." -a gorgeously engorged line of poetry. Spring, where I live, lasts about a week. The daffodils and crocuses sprout up in that week and die off about as quickly. The sky, which has been grayish and cloudful, gives up the ghost of winter and gives the sun a chance to blue the sky for about 7 days in a row. It is the most glorious week of the year before the humidity of summer sets in. It is almost here. Hope for a better world seems more possible with a sunlit blue sky. The "descending blue...all in a rush" feels like my idea of heaven on earth. Which is to say, a place chock full of kindness, understanding, love, and embracing of differences in the wide swath of humanity. With heaven so close, how can we not hope for a better world? Happy Spring to all who celebrate it. 💜
Observation is contagious. Thank you Padraig..
I must challenge Hopkin's notion of a sullied Eden with a bit of John Muir that always comforts me in hard times:
"I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day."
~ John Muir, "Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon," Overland Monthly, August, 1873; and John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938), page 72.
How delicious!
Thank you!! His journals are amazing. Helpful reminder of them.
Have a hard agree with Muir here, since Eden is a human construct about how we are both creatures and creators. All Creation follows its own imperatives and meanings; we can but witness in our short lives and more or less ineptly try to explain it to ourselves and then each other. Even Muir's phrase "creation's dawn" and "half made" implies a linear model of thought (beginning, middle, end) -- when nature is inarguably cyclical. This leads me to imagine we came to this party through looking at the earth's horizon from our own two feet. It does look like a beginning, middle, and end can be trod. But if you once start trudging, you will eventually find you walk an enormous circle to return from where you began.
Yes! I agree with you about Muir's linear view, NMC. That bugs me too because I also embrace the cyclical experience of time.
My favorite part of this quote is actually, "The morning stars still sing together …" Ever since I was a teenager, that phrase has helped me question my culture's assumption that a natural, global harmony has been irretrievably lost. It may seem obscured at times, but it remains beyond corruption. I wake up every morning trying to understand this teaching and hear that star song.
“Spring” is my word magnet. I simply cannot see beyond the feathery iron filings of romping newness, boldly greens, drooping snow piles, and sprigging stems. Can there be a more bounteous word. “Spring”. Hallelujah and amen
another note - sometimes when I'm writing, I play Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight" over and over. Folx, do yourself a solid, go to the link Padraig posted, "Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, The Unsung Collective." It inspires me. Maybe it will you too.
I very much love the juice and joy line too but also appreciate this: When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
I have long found some weeds beautiful. I know these wheels. There is something festive and celebratory about them. Like fireworks on the ground. It could have been so many of the vibrant spring flowers exalted here but he chose the weed and put it in early. I like that.
Hmmm. The early weed gets the word?
“and thrush / Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring / The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing”
I adore these lines! They give me an inkling of how and why bird song has rescued me a million times: the rescue comes out of nowhere, is instantaneous, plus utterly impossible to resist.
Music has also been the juice and joy getting me through these confounding weeks.
Funnily enough the Max Richter reimagining of Vivaldi has been on repeat this week in my ears, as part of a mixtape of melancholy classical music I recently published. The hope with each mixtape is to connect people to moments of calm and healing that only music can provide:
https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelwriteswords/p/melancholy-mixtape-april-2025
Thank you, as always, for this beautiful Sunday meditation. 💙
This has been my sprintime "go to" once again, and aptly enough is called "The Rise." WARNING: contains words from Blake, and kick ass bagpipes. Turn it up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icF-t7-6920
Thank you for sharing this!
https://youtu.be/NH_SONDJGPA
Check this out, too. I'm not much for classical music but this Scottish medley (live) is utterly stunning, utterly speechlessly beautiful. Music is what language only wishes it could be.
(sorry if this is a duplicate post, had issues getting it in the right place).