Woke this Sunday morning, this Day 602 of the daily poems, to blue skies and the promise of warm weather, 28 July. It is the 180th birthday of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Here is the opening line of ‘The windhover’ – the poem which Hopkins dedicated to Christ our Lord. “I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin …” The circumstance of this day and this poem leads your Editor to proffer one of my own. Although no longer a churchgoer, I can still see the sacred in things around us, and in small actions that make up our quotidian lives.
Sunday morning
Outside, the car doors
thump themselves closed.
People are leaving church
hurrying through the rain
to the sanctuary of their motors.
We sit at home
with the Sunday papers
and coffee
and our mute daughter.
I lift a square of toast for her.
Steer it to her sparrow mouth,
place it on her tongue.
A sacrament.
Peter Ualrig Kennedy
from the collection ‘Songs for a daughter’
Kennedy, published by Dempsey & Windle 2021