Even in the darkest times...

...beauty shines through.

Someone said this in something that I listened to, but I can't remember now.

I love the light, the quality of the light, when in bursts through on stormy days. It is somehow richer, sweeter, holding more gold and more promise than usual.

This, of course, should be the lead into some hopeful and encouraging message about the glories of nature and the mysteries of life and the joy to be found, yay, even in the pits of despair.

Sorry.

Instead, let me direct you to a favourite of mine which links into my current attempts to make friends with crows:

Carrion Comfort, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

And that reminds me. My first book of poetry that I ever bought was Crow by Ted Hughes.