`Air Rinsed After Rain'

Perhaps it’s a function of age, of having seen much but accepting that I will never see everything, that moves me to devote more attention to the natural world, particularly the humble parts unworthy of a watercolorist. It’s the transitoriness that draws me and triggers a pang. A sprawling magnolia grows to the west of our house, across from trashcans and recycling bins. Because of the constant shade, little grass grows there. When the magnolia’s waxy yellow leaves fall to the black, hard-packed soil, I’m mute before the useless beauty. These are not occasions for philosophizing. Crows strut around the yard, flashing blue iridescence in their wings. I had set a trash bag outside the sliding glass doors, not wishing to go out in the rain. Within seconds, a crow landed six feet away, cocked his head, cakewalked up to the plastic sack and drilled it with his beak. I stopped him only because the sack held about seven pounds of cat litter.

On that note, I reintroduce Father Hopkins, who reminds us to see the inscape of such scenes – their unprecedented, one-of-a-kind bundle of qualities, their haecceity or thisness. I thought of him on Tuesday. Rain was falling when we woke and fell through the day until late afternoon, when a wind blew through and cleared the clouds and the sun shown for a few minutes. Then the rain resumed. A splendid June day. On Oct. 27, 1867, Hopkins writes in his journal:

“Stormy rain in morning, blowing in feathers from the spouts; in afternoon fine with ropes of clouds – and some wet, they say.”

The adhesion of sound to sight, of word to image, is pleasing. On July 18 of the same year, during a visit to France, he notes: “At sunset the air rinsed after rain.” Four of seven words deliciously burr with “r.” Best of all is this tour de force of sound and sense, from Jan. 23, 1866, when Hopkins was 21 years old and flexing his poetic muscle:

“Drops of rain hanging on rails etc seen with only the lower rim lighted like nails (of fingers). Screws of brooks and twines. Soft chalky look with more shadowy middles of the globes of cloud on a night with a moon faint or concealed. Mealy clouds with a not brilliant moon. Blunt buds of the ash. Pencil buds of the beech. Lobes of the trees. Cups of the eyes. Gathering back the lightly hinged eyelids. Bows of the eyelids. Pencil of eyelashes. Juices of the eyeball. Eyelids like leaves, petals, caps, tufted hats, handkerchiefs, sleeves, gloves. Also of the bones sleeves in flesh. Juices of the sunrise. Joins and veins of the same. Vermilion look of the hand held against a candle with the darker parts as the middles of the fingers and especially the knuckles covered with ash.”

Seemingly a random chain of associations, but he begins and ends with fingers, as though he always held the bag of images in his hand.