My only salvation this season (and I mean that in a religious sense) is reading poetry. Every morning, a little bit from a favorite book, and a few deep breaths. And then the day goes by in a freeway blur. Here's a poem that made me breathe this morning:
Of Being
-- by Denise Levertov
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:
this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:
this need to dance,
this need to kneel:
this mystery:
