I do not believe that a violent imitation of the horrors of our times is the concern of poetry. Horrors are taken for granted. Disorder is ordinary. … - Denise Levertov

I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist. Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

I was the first to see him, for I grew out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest. He was a man, it seemed. . .

I am so small, a speck of dust moving across the huge world. The
world a speck of dust in the universe.

Are you holding the universe? You hold onto my smallness. How do you grasp it,
how does it not
slip away?

I know so little.

You have brought me so far.

The Avowal

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them;
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.