Spring and Fall

Except for allergies, the best months in my opinion are May and October. They have both the loveliest weather and the most beautiful flora. Here are two pictures Kathbert took with her cell phone (isn't that thing amazing?), of crabapples blossoming just a week or two ago and gorgeous leaves on a maple last fall.

Figure 1: Spring

Figure 2: Fall

"Spring and Fall (To a Young Child)" is my favorite poem by one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was a Catholic priest and did not have children of his own; it is believed he wrote this after a walk in the woods with his young niece, who became upset over the leaves dying in autumn. Here is the text of it, for those who are unfamiliar with it:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Yes, Margaret, we all die... some of us more violently than others. As the stale joke goes, "I always hoped to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa did, not screaming in terror like the other people riding in his car." Some die under the harsh glare of the city streetlights.

Figure 3: Tetracide by Streetlight

Murder is nothing new; in the second generation of humanity we were killing one another, or at least Cain was killing Abel. In the police archives one can find old photos of murder scenes that could have happened yesterday, so familiar do the surroundings and personages involved appear.

Figure 4: Tetracide circa 1923

Famous Hat