Glory be

Glory be to God for dappled things--

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him.”

                              Gerard Manley Hopkins

_____________________________________

there are black and white moments

when all seems set in stone

inexorable

muted

cold

this or that

all or nothing

ah

but the Sacred

and the beauty that is past change

that last golden leaf

that golden grass flocked with ice

and from that beauty come the hope

if not the certainty

that there is something

bigger, deeper, stronger

sweeter, faster

than what we can see

or grasp

bigger than our fear, our rigidity

our greed

praise