Poetry Thursday and update

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

I particularly love the last three lines.
......
Yesterday after work, I came home and rested for a while before going to the hospital to visit a friend. Sometimes, as they say, "bad things happen to good people." Sometimes, it seems that some people have to deal with more set backs than others. Life isn't fair. But some people manage to retain a kind of glowing spirit and fight back as hard as they are able. There is a long row ahead, but she will approach it with courage and with all the energy she can muster.
.......
An update: Just found this poem by Judy Johns on A Reader's Journal and decided to add it here on Poetry Thursday.

The Bad Poets Prayer

Lord,
Let me wake up with the gift
to see humor in grass,
pathos in telephone poles,
rhythm in parking lots,
and color in pigeons.
Lift me from the quicksand
of cliche and tired images
which weigh like cement shoes
on my poor murdered verse.
Others have this gift,I have a craving as
strong as any addict
for the rush, the high
of knowing that no other poet
could capture this same moment
as perfectly.
And if that is too much to ask,
then take away this urge
to commit to paper
evidence that I lack the gift.
--Judy Johns