Hunting the Phoenix

(Nun by Morris Louis, 1912-1962, American Abstract
Expressionist painter)

Today we begin a month of contemplation guided by poetry. The poem below speaks to a journey of inner discovery made possible by the exploration of past experience.

According to Greek mythology, the phoenix is a wondrous bird with shining red and gold plumage. It lives for centuries until there comes a time when it breaks out into a haunting dirge, before it burns itself on a funeral pyre of spices set alight by the sun and fanned by its own wings. The phoenix then arises from the ashes, renewed, resurrected, to live again.

HUNTING THE PHOENIX

Leaf through discolored manuscripts,
make sure no words
lie thirsting, bleeding,
waiting for rescue. No:
old loves half-
articulated, moments forced
out of the stream of perception
to play “statue,”
and never released —
they had no blood to shed.
You must seek
the ashy nest itself
if you hope to find
charred feathers, smoldering flightbones,
and a twist of singing flame
rekindling.

~ Denise Levertov (1923-1977), English-born American poet

The Fountain

(A cyanotype, also called a sun print or
blueprint, circa 1850, by British botanist
Anna Atkins, 1797-1871)

“There is a politeness of the heart. It is akin to love.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer, poet, dramatist, and scientist

THE FOUNTAIN

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched — but not because
she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among the scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

~ Denise Levertov (1923-1977), English-born American poet

Talking to Grief

(Mourning Parents by Käthe Kolwitz, 1867-1945, German sculptor, printmaker, and painter)

Love includes grief. A family must be prepared.

TALKING TO GRIEF

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should cast you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house as your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

~ Denise Levertov (1923-1977), English-born American poet

The Breathing

(The Lynx by Christopher Pratt, born 1935, a Canadian
painter living in the province of Newfoundland)

Christopher Pratt is my favorite Canadian painter.

Some critics have dismissed his art as mere “realism,” cold and objective realism. But I think that one Toronto art curator had it right when he wrote: “Because Pratt paints things people recognize, they make that mistake. Nothing could be more misleading. He’s a metaphysical painter, concerned with defining qualities of experience rather than portraying specific objects or events. His work is as abstract as Mondrian.”

THE BREATHING

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.

~ Denise Levertov (1923-1997), English-born American poet