The Weeping Willow Diaries

Poetry Thursday.

(Thursday, September 14, 2006)

It's been an incredibly busy week, and within the pressures of having so much to do, I have found myself becoming more and more tempted to keep bustling around even when I should, or can, be resting.

I'm the sort of person who firmly believes in well-earned rest, even if you don't feel like you've earned it! Your mind needs it; your body needs it. I've had to stop myself so many times this week when I knew it was time for rest, but I tried to get something done during my rest anyway. Reading for classes whilst laying on the couch, when real rest means just that--even if reading doesn't feel like it takes away from rest, even if you enjoy the material, it's still taxing on your mind. So, this week I have been quiet.

On the same note, it's been dreary and rainy all week, and I've had to really try to find those simple pleasures... they weren't so obvious in the grey clouds that loomed all week, and are still looming. I was reminded of one of my favorite poems, and, although it doesn't seem to, this actually does tie into this week's prompt for Poetry Thursday. We were given a similar assignment once in a poetry class I took, and I decided to write my own poem inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty." Because I am not at home now, and so I don't have my copy of my own poem here, I will give you Hopkins' piece for now... let you appreciate it... and share mine later.

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 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:
Praise him.