The Return of the Kingfisher

Once, I kept a blog whose title alluded to one of Hopkins’s birds. I took it down, for reasons I cannot quite remember. I don’t regret those words’ loss, any more than I regret tilling under the little square of poorly-tended garden next to our house. Some fruit had come of it, but it wasn’t really a part of how I lived.

 Neither is high weir, but I haven’t taken it down yet–for reasons I cannot quite articulate.

Here’s another of Hopkins’s birds:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
    As tumbled over rim and roundy wells
    Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
    Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
    Selves- goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
   Keeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is–
   Chríst. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
   To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

I can’t imagine what my actions speak or spell to the Redactor’s eye.