Sweet Caroline

There was a severe squall when I was having my hair sorted this morning but after lunch the sun broke through and Storm Caroline didn't make herself felt. On my walk I disturbed a charm of goldfinches. They were feeding on burdock seedheads on the ground. I wouldn't let MrQ cut the field all summer but relented in the autumn. The flail battered the big burdock plants down but has left the seedheads intact to be enjoyed by the birds. The bird in my image was completely wrapped up in an elaborate preening routine. It stayed in the same position in the hazel hedge for ages, busy and ignoring me. Then it turned and seemed to be saying, "What are you looking at?" :)

Today's poem is from The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44403/the-wreck-of-the-deutschland My book has just two verses, the first starts with, "I am soft sift ...."

The poem was written in memory of five Franciscan nuns who were drowned, along with 145 other people, when the Deutschland sank off the coast of Essex in 1875. I don't get it.