Gratitude Monday: He fathers-forth

Particularly in our current environment, one of undeclared class warfare that pits the oligarchs against everyone else on every field—economics, environment, education, politics, religion, resource allocation—I struggle with maintaining any kind of spiritual, emotional and mental balance. So I make a conscious effort to absorb and honor the beauty and grace in my daily life.

As I do, I follow the prescription of an old photography professor—when something strikes me, I also try to look around for another perspective, to see if there’s not something else about it equally beautiful.

Viz:

I went out to glory in the dogwood in my cluster, which of course were spectacular.

But so, too, was the shadow it threw on the sidewalk.

This reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”, today’s entry for National Poetry Month. Just the first line opens me up for the joy and the loveliness that’s all around us, in both nature and the work people do to make our lives easier.

“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 áll trádes, 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.

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

To be led by a fool

Like many writers of science fiction, Octavia E. Butler used the “otherworld” settings of her novels to explore a variety of themes, including African American spiritualism, characterizing survival as heroic in itself and criticizing hierarchies. Her work won many writing awards, as well as a MacArthur Fellowship (you know—the “genius” grant).

She’s not known primarily as a poet, but she used poems to frame her prose.

Butler set her two-book Earthseed series in a post-Apocalyptic Earth. In the 2020s. (Parable of the Sower was published in 1993; Parable of the Talents in 1998.) She prefaced each chapter with a poem. My entry for National Poetry Month today is from Chapter 11 of the former; it does seem appropriate.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu