Count the Almonds - Paul Celan

{Sadly, this was originally written in German, and so the translation has ravaged it a little. Yet still beautiful.}

Count the almonds,
count what was bitter and kept you awake,
count me in:

I looked for your eye when you opened it, no one was looking at
you,
I spun that secret thread
on which the dew you were thinking
slid down to the jugs
guarded by words that to no one's heart found their way.

Only there did you wholly enter the name that is yours,
sure-footed stepped into yourself,
freely the hammers swung in the bell frame of your silence,
the listened for reached you,
what is dead put its arm round you also
and the three of you walked through the evening.

Make me bitter.
Count me among the almonds.

Thanksgiving.

Pied Beauty by Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

Práise hím.


{The things in my life for which I am grateful are innumerable. Deo Gratias.}

Pies.

Pie-making is therapeutic amidst the chaos.

{Fresh fruit}

{Recipe}

{Sing a song of Blackbirds}

{Ready to Bake}

{Cherry}

{Apple}

Burt Glinn, Barcelona, 1960.