Or Perhaps It's Gerard Manley Hopkins' Birthday

Perhaps it’s today, July 28, 2005. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ birthday. Gerard is 161 years old today. Garrison Keeler, America’s funny looking, wry laugh master of the Great White North, says so on his radio show. Early morning five-minute show. Funny looking because I think what happened is that when he was young someone folded his face in half around a copy of Ring Larndner’s You Know Me Al, and it never fully recovered. Hopkins, 161 years old today and counting. I hear this, and I pull one of his books.

One of the many compilations. One of the many collections. Editions. One of the many attempts to sum up Hopkins for us. One of the largely failed attempts.

I turn to “The Windhover.” I read the first few lines: “I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding/Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding/High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing/In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing….” And so forth. Until it ends with the line, “…Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.”

Lovely stuff, I’m thinking. Lovely stuff. Pack up. Saddle up. A bit old fashioned, is what I’m thinking. A bit. Well. Swooning. In its sensibility.

Head out on the highway, and find the sun. The sun . It’s neither gold nor vermilion so much as it’s yellow and white by now. It’s been up. Oh. Maybe forty-five minutes, an hour. And what’s happening is it’s turning the wet grass to a yellow-white sheen. Or white-yellow. The white’s the main thing. The main element. Like a good friend used to say, white light of eternity. Which I think’s a good characterization. A good thought about what this color is. When you see it in a fire.

And so. The sun’s white-yellow on the leaves of the trees and here on the beige upholstery of the car and on the red paint of the car’s body and on the trunks of the passing trees and on the glass of the passing cars and in the sky. White-yellow on the golf course grass. Like a sheet. A white-yellow silk sheet that has its own light. That shines its own light back upward into the air and all around. That makes the close cut golf course grass difficult to look at this early in the morning.

The sun hangs up there. Hangs up there. Burning above the golf course and the interstate and the fields where the crown vetch rollicked a month and a half ago. Blossomed into that white-pink-purple color that has the feeling. That has the feeling about it. Of gentleness. Of sacrifice and gentleness. I don’t know why.

The sun hangs up there over the golf course and the trees and the fields and the buildings and the other cars and the extinguished street lights and the horizon like some alien. Some UFO looking over the place. Inspecting the place for. Well who knows what. Who knows what it’s inspecting us for. But that’s what it appears to be doing, hovering as it is, this close to the planet. This near in the sky. Close as an alien spacecraft or a bird. A high-flying bird. A mythical bird, hovering. Giving us a look-see. Giving us its morning once-over. Just in case. Who knows. It might see something it likes and swoop. Swoop and drop. And then take whatever it is away.

Perhaps to another planet. Perhaps to another part of the whole cosmic enterprise. Who knows.

It turns the normally blue sky a sort of white blue. A very pale, pale blue that is typical of this time of day. This driving to work time. This time of year.
Certain places where the land is low and the grass is tall, fog is coming off the grass like smoke. Burning off the grass in the white yellow light as if the low, wet grass were burning. Were hot enough, this close to the burning alien, that it has burst into flames at its roots and is burning there. Smoldering there. In the wet.

This is what I’m thinking as I drive. As my tires spin over the concrete and asphalt. As the world rushes and the sun burns up there like some alien that has instruments. That has secret devices or methods or both. For knowing. Knowing everything I can think of. Before I think it, even. As I’m driving. Just driving to work. Like normal. In the white-yellow light that’s dazzling all around. That’s splintering and turning to a luminous sand or powder all around. Dusting. Burying everything. Deep and blinding so I have to put on the shades and squint.

So I just drive. I’m driving into it. Into all the white. Into the brightness the alien is making. That intensifies off the steering wheel and the hands there. Hands that are on the wheel and that appear to belong to me. But I’m not strictly speaking sure. Since they’re bright as suns themselves. A brightness that’s laid down like a burning rain now. A dry burning rain that’s cool. Cool and warm and flickering like a flame. Everywhere the car heads. Everywhere I look.