Today is a beautiful day. It’s mid-October in Alberta and our brief too-early stint with winter is nothing more than a bad memory. I’m looking forward to working in the yard tonight and then going to yoga for some much needed de-stressing. I am extremely grateful that the weather is going to hold long enough for our new furnace to be installed. My sister Lori called yesterday wondering if Tim and I would be interested in going to Antigua in January. Interested?! You bet! Sadly, the cost of the new furnace eliminates the possibility. Oh well, another time. It’s something to dream about.
Because it is such a beautiful day I want to share the following poem, one of my absolute favorites, by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
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;
And all trades, 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.
(1877)
All That Matters 