Lines to Remember

    Circular. Often events follow a path, circuitous perhaps, and then come back to their beginning root. To begin—I listened to an interview with the poet and prose writer David Whyte.        Because he was interesting I went to the library and borrowed two of his books— the only two that were immediately available—neither one a poetry book.

    Within the first ten pages of one book Whyte quotes Peter Levi. Years ago I bought one of Levi’s books because a friend suggested his poetry. Levi was a Jesuit priest, an archeologist, a poet, a reviewer, a translator, a writer of prose, and eventually an ex- priest. 

    I no longer have the book and haven’t read his poems in years, but there’s an attraction because there was a connection to a complicated friendship. 

    When I read his lines about a winter morning I return to many winter mornings.

     I return to other places and earlier days. As a child I climbed a snow mound and thought myself intrepid. As a young mother I sat with a child on a sled and sped down a hill between two houses. As a young woman discovering who she was I walked with another in the falling snow and spoke of discovering the world anew. As a woman who loved being with women I camped out in a cabin, walked in the new snow, and spoke about being open.

    Just reading Peter Levi’s name and then these lines...I return to a maple table in a kitchen and three women sharing poems. I return to one woman singing poetry. I return to the first time I hear Peter Levi’s name.

              

 On winter days when the late-rising sun

   eases the grass under the painful walls,

 I feel it down to the roots of my bones: