The Claims of Reasonable Gloom (In Refusal of)

Time for a poem, no doubt. Less words, greater beauty, deeper meaning (than all my yadda yadda).

This from Denise Levertov, writing about a place which is a kind of "country city" - Seattle - and where I lived for eight years. (This goes out to Seattle compadres BMD, LN-R, and, if you're reading, TPN.)

Celebration

Brilliant, this day - a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadows cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green -
whether it's ferns or lichen or needles
or impatient points of bud on spindly bushes -
greener than ever before.

And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for blessing,
a festive rite, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.