One reader – who works in Big Bend National Park in Texas – sent the photo below from his "work-place" and one sent this poem by Emily Dickinson, "We grow accustomed to the Dark":
We grow accustomed to the Dark—
When light is put away—
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye—A Moment—We uncertain step
For newness of the night—
Then—fit our Vision to the Dark—
And meet the Road—erect— And so of larger—Darkness—
Those Evenings of the Brain—
When not a Moon disclose a sign—
Or Star—come out—within— The Bravest—grope a little—
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead—
But as they learn to see—Either the Darkness alters—
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight—
And Life steps almost straight.
This poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, also sent in by a reader, is another classic:
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
The Dish 