the descending blue

Good morning and welcome to National Poetry Month! It's 2018, which is honestly pretty weird, and I am WOEFULLY under-prepared for National Poetry Month. However, do not be deterred: under-prepared just means that things will probably be a little wacky and spontaneous.

In addition to being April 1, today is Easter, and the second day of Passover, and while spring remains elusive, I am optimistic. So here is my favorite queer Jesuit priest on spring:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
    Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
    The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
    The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
    A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
    Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
    Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "Spring," May 1877.