As kingfishers catch fire

By Aimee Stewart (Secondary Teacher) 

AS KINGFISHERS CATCH FIRE

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS 1844-1889

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;      

As tumbled over rim in 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 Whát I do is me: for that I came.   

Í say móre: the just man justices;         

Kéeps 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.

Poetry can be a frustrating thing – confounding us and concealing its meaning. A poem, especially one such as the above classic by Gerard Manley Hopkins, requires work to comprehend.

It requires us to slow down, to reread it, to be willing to acknowledge that (at least on the first reading), there is much that we do not understand. We have to be willing to sit with it a while; to notice its depth and colour.

In many ways, I believe this is a metaphor for the world around us. We are surrounded by a world in which, as Hopkins so aptly declares “kingfishers catch fire” and “dragonflies draw flame” in the beauty of their colour and their movement. In staff devotions this morning we were reminded that inside every leaf in every tree on our property, the miracle of photosynthesis is occurring and giving us oxygen.

This beauty occurs, not only in nature, but in the people with whom we interact daily; in our students and parents and staff. Hopkins reminds us in the second stanza that buried within each person is a flash and shimmer of God himself – the “Christ” who “plays in then thousand places”.

My hope is that - even in the busyness of beginning a new semester - we can stop for a minute slow ourselves down, and take a second look at the people around us; sit with them a while, and notice their depth and colour.