Stormy Sierra Sunrise

“An absolute

patience.

Last bit of visible blue sky seen over the shed

Trees stand

up to their knees in fog.

Storm Coming over Peckinpah Ridge

The fog

slowly flows

uphill.

Ghost Plant, Graptopetalum paraguayense and Sedum 'Dragon's Blood'

White

cobwebs, the grass

Damp and furry Lamb's Ears

leaning where deer

have looked for apples.

Pyracantha

The woods

from brook to where

Remnants of wispy fog

the top of the hill looks

over the fog, send up

not one bird.

Camellia 'Hana-Jiman', as fragile as tissue

So absolute, it is

no other than

happiness itself, a breathing

too quiet to hear.”

Jeweled Euphorbia purpurea

–  Denise Levertov, The Breathing

Ten days of rain coming…..S.L.

Notes: Denise Levertov (1923-97) was born in Essex, and educated at home by her father, a Russian Jewish immigrant, who became an Anglican priest, and by her Welsh mother. In 1948, she emigrated to America, where she was acclaimed by Kenneth Rexroth in The New York Times as ‘the most subtly skilful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving,’ and during the following decades she became ‘a poet who may just be the finest writing in English today’