As kingfishers catch fire...

Part of an abecedary of poetry.

I’ve tried to write about this poem many times, but gave up when I came across Abram Van Engen’s essay. The lines starting with “like each tucked string tells” is one of the most densely inventive sequence of English words I’ve encountered.

As kingfishers catch fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
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 dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
--- Gerard Manley Hopkins

It speaks beautifully to the idea of purpose, grounding the concept’s expansive application for humans (from a Christian perspective) in the narrower range of animals and tools.