IN LOVE OF G. M. HOPKINS

I watch from window-dark light dim

down and dwindle, fleck her haunted hair

with leaves-sieved-rain, hymn

for ear, eye, the moon cloud-caught, snared

though its gray ghost ghosts her limbs

enough to see full form of her, her body flare

under oak-arbor, whims

of weighed-down, stone-stopped air.

Streetlights strike and mist to find

her stare the lightning down, to still

despite the ways these weathers twine, kill—

despite flash, flicker, mud-runnels-branch and thunder, signs

that heaven's harrows haunt, may malign—

till this beauty summer's storm screams in, chilled.