A Blessing

Sometimes I wonder why I bother reading other poets... 

Hovering light embraces

the yellowing poplars, four spires

evenly spaced, a dozen clustered

apart, all of them backed by foresty dark,

a curtain of conifers.

Waking and sleeping, there was grace, reassurance,

during the hours of darkness:

a change in perception, such as we read of

in 19^th-century stories, when someone in fever

visibly passed from danger into a calm lagoon

of slumber, promising health.

The light on the trees a nimbus now

of downy yellow, embrace without pressure of weight,

compassionate light.

- Denise Levertov, “A Blessing”

Levertov is all I need...

I think I've posted this one before, but it captures my desperate need to escape from the craziness of school right now...

Emblem (1)

Dreaming, I rush
thrust from the cave of the winds,
into the midst of a wood of tasks.
The boughs part, I sweep
poems and people with me a little way;
dry twigs, small patches of earth
are cleared and covered.
Then I find myself
out over open heath, a sigh that holds
a single note, heading
far and far to the horizon's bent firtree.

Metamorphic Journal 7

Installment number 7

Let me say
it is I who am a river.
Someone is walking along
the shore of me.

He is looking
sometimes at my surface,
the lights and the passing
wingshadows,

sometimes
through me, and down
towards rocks and sand,

sometimes across me
into another country.

Does he see me?

Metamorphic Journal 6

Installment Number 6!

Part II - February

'And what if the stream
is shallow?'

Then I will wade in it.

'-the current only a ripple
that will not bear you?'

I'll make my way,
not leaf nor stone, a human,
step by step, walking,
slipping, scrambling,
seeking the depth

where the waters will summon themselves
to lift me
off my feet.

I am looking always
for the sea.

Metamorphic Journal 5

Installment Number 5 - I think this is my favorite.

                I don't know how deep,
how cold. I want
to touch it, drink of it, open mouth
bent to it.

Sometimes as a child
I'd slip on the rocks and fall in.
Never mind.
I wanted to know
the river's riveriness with my self,

be stone or leaf, sink or be
swept downstream
to spin and vanish, spin
and hover, spin
and sweep on beyond sight.

Metamorphic Journal 4

"It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long."
- Thoreau
(I slept outside again last night)

This is part 4:

Whether or not I find
words for you, to tell myself who you are,

I shan't mistake you
for a tree to cling to. Let me speak of you
as of a river:
quick-gleaming, conjuring
little pyramids of light that pass
in laughter from braided ripple to ripple;
but pausing, dark
in pools where boughs
lean over;
but never
at a standstill --

Metamorphic Journal 3

Installment number 3!

My friend... My friend, I would like
to talk to myself about you: beginning
with your bright, hazel, attentive eyes,
the curving lines of your mouth.
I would like to ponder the way
I have grown so slowly aware those lines
are beautiful, generous. Energy lights your
whole face, matching
the way you walk. A gradual seeing,
not in a phantom flash of storm...
But I'm not ready
to speak about you,
Not yet.
Perhaps I will never be ready,
nor you to be spoken of.

Metamorphic Journal 2

Installment Number 2!

If I came to a brook, off came my shoes,
looking could not be enough -
or my hands at least must be boats or fish for a minute,
to know the purling water at palm and wrist.
My mind would sink like stone
and shine underwater,
dry dull brown
                      turned to an amber glow.

Metamorphic Journal

I found this fantastic long-form poem by Denise Levertov. It's called "Metamorphic Journal", and it's broken up into 3 parts, which consist of several poems each. Thus, I'll be posting this poem, one piece at a time.
PS it's beautiful.

Part 1 - December

A child, no-one to stare, I'd run full tilt to a tree,
hug it, hold fast, loving the stolid way it
stood there, girth
arms couldn't round,
                               the way
only the wind made it speak, gave it
an autumn ocean of thoughts
creaking on big wings into the clouds, or rolling
in steady uncountable sevens in
to the wild cliffs when I shut my eyes.


Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode...

Levertov...

Somehow, this poem encapsulates today. I don't think I could even explain to myself exactly why. But this is what poetry does: it gets at something deep down, and takes hold until we understand it. Or we may never understand it, but it becomes a part of us...

Emblem (I)

Dreaming, I rush
thrust from the cave of the winds,
into the midst of a wood of tasks.
The boughs part, I sweep
poems and people with me a little way;
dry twigs, small patches of earth
are cleared and covered.
Then I find myself
out over open heath, a sigh that holds
a single note, heading
far and far to the horizon's bent firtree.

Emblem (II)

A silver quivering cocoon that shakes
from within, trying to break.
                                          What psyche
is wrestling with its shroud?
Blunt diamonds
scrape at its casing,
urging it out.
But there is too much grief. The world
is made of days, and is itself
a shrouded day.
It stifles. It's our world, and we
its dreams, its creased
compacted wings.

Still in love with Levertov...

This is a simple, straightforward poem about having friends who are far away...

Complaint and Rejoinder

There's a kind of despair, when your friends
are scattered across the world; you see
how therefore never is there a way
each can envision truly
the others of whom you speak.
                    Oceans divide your life,
you want to place all of it -
people, places, their tones, atmospheres,
everything shared uniquely with each -
into a single bowl, like petals, like sand
in a pail. No one can ever hear or tell
the whole story.

(And do you really think
this would not be so if you lived
all of your life on an island,
in a village too small to contain
a single stranger?)

- Denise Levertov

Memory demands so much

Memory demands so much,
it wants every fiber
told and retold.                      
                      It gives and gives
but for a price, making you 
risk drudgery, lapse
into document, treacheries
of glaring noon and a slow march.
Leaf never before
seen or envisioned, flying spider
of rose-red autumn, playing
a lone current of undecided wind,
lift me with you, take me
off this ground of memory that clings
to my feet like thick clay,
exacting gratitude for gifts and gifts.
Take me flying before
you vanish, leaf, before
I have time to remember you,
intent instead on being
in the midst of that flight,
of those unforeseeable words.

- Denise Levertov

What Goes Unsaid

I love it when a poem forever changes the way I think about something... My mind will now forever be a forest:

In each mind, even the most candid,

there are forests, where needled haze overshadows

the slippery duff and patches of snow long-frozen, 

or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,

loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles.

In these forests there live certain events, shards 

of memory, scraps of once-heard lore, intimations

once familiar - some painful, shameful, some

drably or laughable inconsequent, others 

thoughts that the thinker 

could never hold fast and begin to tell.

And some - a few - that are noble, tender,

and so complete in themselves, they had 

no need of saying.

                           There they dwell,

no sky above them, resting

like dragonflies on the dense air, or nested

on inaccessible twigs.

It is right that there are these secrets

(even the weightless ones have perhaps

some part to play in the unperceiveable whole)

and these forests; privacies

and the deep terrain to receive them.

Right that they rise at times into our ken,

and are acknowledged.

- Denise Levertov

The Tide

Sorry about all the Levertov, but she's just so perfect...

Where is the Giver to whom my gratitude
rose? In this emptiness
there seems no Presence.

                          How confidently the desires
                          of God are spoken of!
                          Perhaps God wants
                          something quite different.
                          Or nothing, nothing at all.

Blue smoke from small
peaceable hearths ascending
without resistance in luminous
evening air.
Or eager mornings - waking
as if to a song's call.
Easily I can conjure
a myriad of images
of faith.
Remote. They pass
as I turn a page.

                          Outlying houses, and the train's rhythm
                          slows, there's a signal box,
                          People are taking their luggage
                          down from the racks.
                          Then you wake and discover
                          you have not left
                          to begin the journey.

Faith's a tide, it seems, ebbs and flows responsive
to action and inaction.
Remain in stasis, blown sand
stings your face, anemones
shrivel in rock pools no wave renews.
Clean the littered beach, clear
the lines of a forming poem,
the waters flood inward.
Dull stones again fulfill
their glowing destinies, and emptiness
is a cup, and holds
the ocean.

Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles...

This morning, as I was looking out my window at all the "sundry" grayness, a bald eagle and a seagull came out of nowhere and flew right up to my window. They chased each other around for awhile, before the eagle took off toward Chuckanut Mountain. Bald eagles are all over the place just east of here, along the Nooksack River, but I've never seen one right in Bellingham. So naturally, this is the poem for today:

Settling

I was welcomed here - clear gold
of late summer, of opening autumn,
the dawn eagle sunning himself on the highest tree,
the mountain revealing herself unclouded, her snow
tinted apricot as she looked west,
tolerant, in her steadfastness, of the restless sun
forever rising and setting.
                                      Now I am given
a taste of the grey foretold by all and sundry,
a grey both heavy and chill. I've boasted I would not care,
I'm London-born. And I won't. I'll dig in,
into my days, having come here to live, not to visit.
Grey is the price
of neighboring with eagles, of knowing
a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.

- Denise Levertov

Levertov again...

I didn't get around to posting yesterday... So here's a two-part poem by none other than Denise Levertov:

Lovers (1)

With one I learned
how roots turn
to grip loam,
learned
the pulse of stone,
mineral arteries,
skyless auroras.

Was it so indeed?
I remember now
only telling myself
it was so.

Another led me
under the wing of
the waterfall. Light
was fine mist.
My skin was myself.

I remember now
only the words,
what they tell is gone.

And others I loved -
what were their kingdoms?
What songs did I sing of them,
and gazed from what high windows
toward their borders?

I journeyed
onward, my road always
drawing me further.



Lovers (II) : Reminder

'But that other:
he danced like a gypsy's bear at the winter crossroads,
the days of your youth and his are a bit of blue glass
bevelled by the oceans and kept in his pocket,
wherever he is is always
now.
Touch, mass, weight, warmth:
a language you found you knew.
He brought you
the bread of sunlight on great platters of laughter."

Read those last two lines again please - "the bread of sunlight on great platters of laughter"! And "a bit of blue glass bevelled by the oceans"! Love it.

The Love of Morning

This was on my mind this morning. I hope you will forgive my overzealous enthusiasm for Levertov...


The Love of Morning

It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.

Celestial Stigmata

I was reading this poem while wandering around Henderson's (used bookshop), and that idea of "celestial stigmata" stuck with me. Just let that sink in for a while... What a phenomenal image...
PS I wanted to find a picture of the sculpture this poem is based on, but I was unsuccessful.
Fun fact: Philip McCracken is from Bellingham!

Southern Cross
(After a Sculpture by Philip McCracken)

A darkness rivered, swirled, meandered
by fathomless fiery currents.
Dense abyss of planes and angles,
pinned by unblinking constellations,
celestial stigmata.
And at the core,
bright blood of the wounded wood
(not cut, riven
by secret canker
now revealed)
tardily down the rough cleft
descends and beads.

- Denise Levertov

Morning Mist

Levertov is still blowing my mind daily:

The mountain absent,
a remote folk-memory.

The peninsula
vanished, hill, trees -
gone, shoreline
a rumour.

And we equate
God with these absences -
Deus absconditus.
But God

is imaged
as well or better
in the white stillness

resting everywhere,

giving to all things
an hour of Sabbath,

no leaf stirring,
the hidden places

tranquil in solitude.

Once Only, Again

I know I already posted this one, but I read it last night while watching the sunset over the Olympic Mountains, and I think it's worth talking about. 
For some reason, I tend to be rather inept at living in the present. I have been extraordinarily blessed with some spectacular experiences, and I tend to be disappointed when things aren't spectacular all the time. I get bored because nothing too exciting is happening around me, so I disconnect until something interesting happens. I don't know how to handle the "dreary intercourse of daily life". But, as usual, Levertov has managed to eloquently slap me in the face. 


Once Only - Denise Levertov
All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every initiation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
             did happen in our lives, our stories
             are not drab with its absence: but don't
expect now to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.


Denise Levertov herself said that poetry is "intrinsically revolutionary"; that it is "an ecstasy and a giving of life" (From the essay, "Great Possessions", in The Poet in the World). And that, my friends, is why I read poetry. 
I'm constantly looking back and trying to bring bits of my past into the present, and it just doesn't work. I try to "do, be, revisit" all of those beautiful pieces of my life, while denying the truth that whatever I'm clinging to existed just "once, only". And I can't "expect now to return for more". I realize how disappointing that may sound, but I think it's rather freeing. It doesn't mean that I have to let go completely, just that I can't expect to go back. I can gather up my memories, and move forward to "the next song" which is "utterly present"; which is "now or never". Because this moment exists just "once, only".