Dappled Things

For the last five months I have been reconditioning my body after three years of illness.  It has felt amazing.  I now can walk three miles every day. This means that I can go back to my old routes. My absolute favorite is the botany pond on BYU campus. This morning was gorgeous--the temperature was cool, so moving was a pleasure.  The sun was bright and the sky  was shot with high wispy mare's tales. The path was dappled in shadow and light and the sound of rushing water accompanied my steps.   The last couple of days I have felt a euphoric lifting in my soul.  I can move.   I can be outside.  I am alive.   On Saturday I almost cried as I walked through the iris garden--the iri as we call them in my family.  This morning I sang inwardly the words of a poem that I have always loved because I praise God for dappled things and for my body which has been dappled in sunlight and health.  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.

13. Pied Beauty

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;         5     And áll trádes, 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:         10                   Praise him.

Indeed.
Amen.