The Breathing
by Denise Levertov
An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear.
Musings
Love is like a looking-glass
And Life a long, arduous voyage on an uncharted sea.
I don’t know what to tell you;
I don’t know what to say.
Listening to talk of madness in a candlelit bar/cafe.
The snow outside turns to unhappy slush
on a Sunday evening.
I want music,
but settle for words and imported beer,
watching the players before my eyes,
playing my silent bit part at a corner table —
while those onstage speak their chosen lines.
The beer goes to my head like a tight cap,
as does the nostalgia spouting from the barmaid:
distillations of books and movies
still etched on my brain
from those ever remembered nights
of hipness revelry
Greenwich Village 1960s.
Oh so serious flights of youth awakening
— Yeah . . .
it all comes back.
Nothing’s ever lost, but, like energy,
returns in different forms.
Metamorphoses.
It’s a night for musings.
My true purpose? as yet disguised.
Life is like a voyage
and this epistle,
merely another page in the log.