WHERE HEALING HAPPENS

“Glory be to God for dappled things.”
          ~ Gerald Manley Hopkins

In real time, all things are dappled, spotted, torn,
   gravel scarring leaves, air sweetening hosta lilies
      on the tops of browned stems, beauty
past change in the middle of change wavering
   in the first freckled rain of fall, which isn’t yet
      and, like all we name, not ever a solid point.

All things cracked and cracking, even the blue sky
   never a finite game, a speckled brown morpho butterfly
      tilting out of the invisible, dissolving into the ordinary
as we turn the knob to open a door to where we’ve lived
   for years without noticing until now the splendor
      of the green paint bleeding through the white.

So open up the side panels of sight beyond the obvious
   fighting hummingbirds floating on the thunder 
      of the pied present into the open space between
the trees, the houses, the cars, the rabbits frozen in the grass, 
   the air so generous it holds whatever pain we give it,
      coats us in warm rain without a cloud in the sky.

(inspired by Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poem “Pied Beauty.”)

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-2013 Kansas Poet Laureate, is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; and The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she is offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborative projects. Her poetry has been widely published, including in Terrain, Half and One, Poets & Writers, Negative Capability, MockingHeart Review, Two Rivers, The New Territory, Louisville Review, and dozens of other journals.