[Lent: day 21/40]

[hermionesviolin]

Daily Bread
-Denise Levertov

A gull far-off
rises and falls, are of a breath,
two sparrows pause on the telephone wire,
chirp a brief interchange, fly back to the ground,
the bus picks up one passenger and zooms on up the hill,
across the water the four poplars
conceal their tremor, feet together, arms pressed to their sides,
behind them the banked conifers dark and steep;
my peartree drops a brown pear from its inaccessible height
into the bramble and ivy tangle, grey sky
whitens a little, now one can see vague forms of cloud
pencilled lightly across it.
This is the day that the Lord hath made,
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

from Place of Passage: Contemporary Catholic Poetry ed. David Craig and Janet McCann (Ashland, OR: Story Line Press, 2000) p. 262

Comments

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Huh. This is the first poem you've posted that I haven't really liked. And it's a Levertov. I usually like her work. (Was she Catholic? I always link her to the Beat poets)