A Poem by Denise Levenhov
I have always loved this poem by Denise Levertov. It moves me the way poetry should. Every time I read it I find myself taking deep breaths to let the words settle into my heart and into my own bruises. This is what compassion is. This is empathy. Recognizing we all have sinkholes; we all have injured spots. Some we know about and some we don’t until we see them suddenly and by accident.
Those injured spots are similar to the thorns of the rose bush. They exist yet untouched for however long and then someone approaches us with good intent but suddenly they touch a thorn by accident. In those moments, we can realize we are all walking through life with these thorns and injured spots. It is in those moments when we can experience connection. When we come across those moments both in ourselves and in others and react with love, that is grace. “Namaste” traditionally translates as “the light in me recognizes the light in you” but it can also recognize the darkness, the thorns.
“The darkness, the shadow, the wounding in me recognizes that in you and I send you love so you may heal those places and live a life with greater joy.”
“Zeroing In”
“I am a landscape,” he said.
“a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
And plains glad in their way
of brown monotony. But especially
there are sinkholes, places
of sudden terror, of small circumference
and malevolent depths.”
“I know,” she said. “When I set forth
to walk in myself, as it might be
on a fine afternoon, forgetting,
sooner or later I come to where sedge
and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,
mark the bogland, and I know
there are quagmires there that can pull you
down, and sink you in bubbling mud.”
“We had an old dog,” he told her, “when I was a boy,
a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot
on his head, if you happened
just to touch it he’d jump up yelping
and bite you. He bit a young child,
they had to take him down to the vet’s and destroy him.”
“No one knows where it is,” she said,
“and even by accident no one touches it.
It’s inside my landscape, and only I, making my way
preoccupied through my life, crossing my hills,
sleeping on green moss of my own woods,
I myself without warning touch it,
and leap up at myself -”
“- or flinch back
just in time.”
“Yes, we learn that.
It’s not a terror, it’s pain we’re talking about:
those places in us, like your dog’s bruised head,
that are bruised forever, that time
never assuages, never.”