New Year’s Day
Former colleague Dana Greene alerted me to this luminescent New Year’s poem by Denise Levertov. In it, the poet compares hope to a small crystal and a cluster of irises.
When Emily Dickinson describes hope as “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” she focuses on the individual. Hope comes to the one in need. In Levertov’s poem, by contrast, the poet finds that her hope grows when she shares it with someone else:
I break off a fragment
to send you.
Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.
Gardeners will understand Levertov’s next image. By spreading out the iris bulbs rather them hoarding them in one place, multiple flowers will burst forth.
Hope grows out of a grain of a grain, hope flourishes out of clumsy and earth-covered roots. Share your 2019 dreams with others and watch what happens.
For the New Year, 1981
I have a small grain of hope–
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.
I need more.
I break off a fragment
to send you.
Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.
Only so, by division,
will hope increase,
like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source–
clumsy and earth-covered–
of grace.
Have a grace-filled 2019!
