Poetry Friday: Hopkins' Cow, Calder's Mobiles, Renoir and a Knock on the Door

Alexander Calder Mobile

This week Tricia over at The Miss Rumphius Effect offered up a lovely example of a "love poem" of random (or not so random) things that brought the poet Rupert Brooke joy. The Stretch assignment was to write a love letter to the world. But how to pick and choose? So many things! I thought of the first two lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Pied Beauty": Glory be to God for dappled things- / for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow.... So here is my short list:

A LOVE POEM TO

Dappled things, of course-
Hopkin's cow.
That's how all things a-dazzle start.
Then the bottoms of toddlers, plus their plump thighs.
A small boy's ear lobes and his mangled prose.
The sigh of various tides from Bahia Kino to Banyul.
A toolbox. Lunch box. Pencil box.
A knock at the door when I know it's my sister.
Mist on the moor complements of Bronte.
Big broad Whitman loving everything large.
The way he sang. Still sings.
And other things. Yellow in January, deep green in July.
Saturn and its rings. Crescent moons.
Calder's mobiles. Crazed glaze on a Renoir.
The blink of an eye. Anything pied.
These things today and each day -- glory be.

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Head over to Laura Purdie Salas's blog for this weeks Poetry Friday round-up!

A Brinded Cow