"I thought I was growing wings — it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire — it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I lea… - Denise Levertov

Ah, grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes in the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for a real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure their scintillant fur, their dust. You are given the questions of others as if they were answers to all you ask. Yes, perhaps this gift is your answer.

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.