In gardens and on windowsills, there now live bonsai-like bushes of rosemary and laurel from Dad's tiny front lawn. A package with protein drinks, food supplements and condiments arrived after he passed, the week Cathi, Martin and I cleared out his flat. Dad had recently bought bamboo steamers and had been talking about the recipes he was planning to experiment with. I was happy to hear that he had used his new phone, in the hospital, just a few days before he went to sleep (to sleep) to send voice messages to many of you. In the previously shared poem from that special evening with him, a few months back, there is weariness and longing for rest, and something more, something beyond perhaps. Yet the first poem he recited by heart, and asked me to read out loud to him, is full of joy, and life, and aliveness. I think many of us swing, and stutter, and sing darker and lighter, quieter and then more loudly again; I certainly do. And so I would like to share this beautiful poem as well, and perhaps I will also read it out loud in the parish Church Brennbichl in late March.

The Windhover
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom 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,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.gash gold-vermilion.