My housemate and I have determined that I suffer from the direct opposite of seasonal depression. It makes me happy when skies are gray. Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul--I am alight. The North Wind doth blow, and we will have snow, and the very thought if it makes my heart sing.
Needless to say, then, I am relishing these wind-beaten mornings, the kitchen spell they make possible: a spell of warmth and wellbeing spun out of gentle indoor lights and the throaty conversation of the coffee maker, underscored by the framed square of bruised autumn day visible above the sink.
I was browsing through my Levertov collection as I sipped my coffee this particular morning, and this poem captured perfectly the way I feel about today. Or rather, after I read this poem, I looked out the window and the day did indeed wring me with the feelings the poem describes. I can't tell you now, in hindsight, if the day made the poem resonate so powerfully, or if the poem made the day resonate so powerfully.
All I know is that they partnered together, and my heart is still, even now, dancing their choreography.
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or was it I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
Denise Levertov: "Variation on a Theme by Rilke" (The Book of Hours, Book 1, Poem 1, Stanza 1)
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