Pied Beauty
Gerard Manly Hopkins
I have just finished reading “Landmarks” by Robert MacFarlane. It is a requiem to lost words. The author has tried to slow the slipping away of words particularly for nature by listing them in between wonderful stories of people who have sought to preserve the concept itself. “Pebbles on the Beach” by for example.
The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins is mentioned in Landmarks as a person who preserves words and in some cases creates words. “Freckled” is a favourite. Perhaps not new but in a new combination or sense. I remember my father remarking on a time when I was about 5 years old and I had described sunlight on a lake as “spreckled.” I have found kindred souls in both authors.
All my examples of couple-colour come from my garden. It is my way of living this poem. It is my landscape “plotted, pieced…..and pied.”
Poetry praised.