A generous colleague and friend, D.J. (with initials like those, how he could he not be?), once gifted me during my days of recovery from a recently passed surgery, a collection of poetry by Denise Levertov. Culling from a wide range of her previously published work, Levertov assembled a group of religiously-minded poems meant really as an occasional book–something one would pick up to read a poem or two when wanting or needing that type of aesthetic voice, but not a collection she saw necessarily as a cohesive whole.
Over the time since I’ve received the book (titled The Stream & the Sapphire ), I’ve done just that: two poems here, another there. I can’t say that my fascinations and concerns (more on those, to be sure, at some point in the future) neatly parallel with Levertov’s, but her wonderment and journey of–toward? about?–faith certainly shine through each of the poems I’ve read.
As some may know, I currently work–and learn–as a chaplain resident at a VA hospital. With this environment invariably come memories of my own medical center stays; happily, though, one of them is the visit of D.J. and receiving Levertov’s small collection.
I take this opportunity, then, to thank D.J. for the kindness of that gesture and to copy one of Levertov’s poems here:
Of Being
I know this happiness
is provisional:
the looming presences–
great suffering, great fear—
withdraw only
into peripheral vision:
but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:
the flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:
this need to dance,
this need to kneel:
this mystery:
Thank you, Dan. Your gift of self and verse continues to serve its purpose.
DAJ
