Opened
it lay before me on the path:
earth’s lightest book —
it has but two pages.
Filled with wonder I read its magic signs.
Then it ascended into the air.
No apocalypse.
Only a couple of words from summer’s
secret revelation:
Aglais io, peacock butterfly.
Christine Busta (1915–1987)
Photograph: Didier Descouens – Own work; copied from wikipedia.
Thank you to Bishop Erik Varden for sharing this poem on his Coram Fratribus blog.
I was leaving to work in the Glebe garden in Canterbury: as I closed the gate, the aptly named Gatekeeper butterfly was enjoying the nectar on Mrs T’s hebe bush, later flitting a few inches and displaying its wings.
Down at the garden a red admiral stopped around long enough to be snapped up – in the nicest possible way.
A great start to the day.
Working from home, our daughter and son looked out of their windows. One spotted a sparrow, nesting in a hole in our brickwork ; the other a red admiral butterfly who, as a caterpillar must have found a safe place to sleep through the winter but woke to a strange new world one warm May morning. Lovely to look up from the screen to see such sights!
Laudato Si!
For the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the turtle a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: Thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God. Psalm 83.4
Walking home from church on Sunday, I saw one of the browned, autumn leaves take flight and land on a bramble beside me.
Mrs Turnstone had convinced herself that all the frogs in this postcode area had died of some dread disease; today it was clear that they had not. There had been an occasional croak from the garden pond, true, but this singer was regarded by her rather like Crusoe, all alone in the world.
This afternoon, after dragging me around the ponds on Abbott’s Hill, looking for spawn but altogether fruitlessly, she sat down to lunch in the garden, and planned the filling in of the pond as no frogs would ever use it again.
After lunch she changed into gardening gear, began cleaning weeds from the path, then noticed a mass of jelly under the logs on the far side, and counted six frogs ranged around the edge of the pool. Her private sun came out.
Mine? A brimstone butterfly flew past us in the woods on Abbot’s Hill. (They are green underfoot as the bluebells push through from below.) I’ve enjoyed this insect since the day when, as a schoolboy twenty feet up a beech tree, the leaf next to my finger took wing.
There was also a small tortoiseshell in the garden at home, its flickering shadow giving it away at midday, not twilight. And two hoverflies seeking nectar on the viburnum.
Here is a picture of a leaf-like brimstone.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Gonepteryx_rhamni
What’s brightening up your life?
Will Turnstone 