let me sink in the silence that echoes inside

[ivyology]

The only songs that mattered were wordless
like those rising in confusion from
the trees or wind-songs that waken
the grass that slept a century, that
waken me to how far we’ve come.

-from "Songs", Philip Levine

I am in love with Philip Levine. He makes space with his poetry. Yes, space. His words create huge vistas of stillness, mostly-grey with traces of color. The more words he uses, the greater the space, and I adore him for it.

The bus route to Hampshire traces through some achingly pretty farmland, all rolling hills and browning grass and grazing cows, New England houses of white and red and yellow, all of it surrounded by the mountains and spotted here and there with forest, knotty clusters of baring trees. I was sleepy-dazed on the way over this morning, intoxicated by the scenery and the absolute quiet of the bus. Amazing how completely six strangers can inhabit their own private universes within the confines of such a small space.

All that and Levine too; it is a wonder that I made it to class at all.

I miss the field. Those stolen summer moments gave me a glimpse of a life in the earth I've never seen before, one I imagined in a conceptual sense and was familiar with through various theologies, but one I'd never before witnessed. But watching grass rippling in the wind, feeling the warmth of the sun, all of it, I felt a connection to it. I can't explain it. I don't want to. There aren't words for some things. But I am deeply grateful for the experience, and I would like to think that the relative peace I've found in the past months has something to do with that, and not just the chemicals now percolating in my brain.

I truly have a love/hate relationship with antidepressants. I have "improved" so significantly that there is no question that I "needed" them. But I do still question the need for said "improvement". Sure, I'm happier now, and no doubt a hell of a lot easier to get along with, but I feel on some level as though it's all a deception. Though my mother's voice in my head mumbles common-sense, rational arguments to that belief, and I mostly agree, I can't completely shake my uncertainties.

That I am now essentially tied to this drug for the rest of my life troubles me, too.

But back to Philip Levine, who is much more interesting than my issues.



The Way Down

On the way down
blue lupine at the roadside,
red bud scattered
down the mountain, tiny
white jump-ups hiding
underfoot, the first push
of wild oats like froth
at the field’s edge. The wind blows
through everything, the crowned
peaks above us, the soft floor
of the valley below,
the humps of rock
walking down the world.

On the way down
from the trackless snow fields
where a blackbird
eyed me from
a solitary pine, knowing
I would go back the way
I came, shaking my head,
and the blue glitter of ice
was like the darkness
of winter nights, deepening
before it could change,
and the only voice
my own saying
Goodbye.

Can you hear me?
the air says. I hold
my breath and listen
and a finger of dirt thaws,
a river drains
from a snow drop
and rages down
my cheeks, our father
the wind hums
a prayer through my mouth
and answers in the oat,
and now the tight rows of seed
bow to the earth
and hold on and hold on.


*Sigh* So, so lovely. I know what's going on *my* Christmas list.