July 12: Kingfishers catch fire

[neverspent]

In the morning, when I drove over the creek on my way to work, a kingfisher was sitting on the electric line over the water. The sun was behind him, so he was just a silhouette with that distinctive crest and beak.


From The Second Book of Birds, Louis Agassiz Fuertes (artist), 1901

In the evening, we had a strong storm. It was classic: first the heavy black clouds, then the wind tossing the trees and carrying a few leaves vertically, high in the air, and then the sheets of rain. Before it started to rain in my location, I could see a bank of clouds over the ridges in the distance to the north, with the clear ribbons of dark rain being released and moving quickly from west to east. After the storm passed, there was cloud-to-cloud lightning in the distance well in to the night.

All together, it reminded me of a verse from Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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.