"My hand on chiseled stone": A touch across the centuries in Denise Levertov's "The Past (II)". #111Words #DeniseLevertov #Levertov #CzesławMiłosz #RobertHaas #ThePastII #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/01/my-hand-on-chiseled-stone-touch-across.html

There was a woman I made love to
and I remembered how holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed.
It hardly had to do with her.
"Longing", we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

-- Robert Haas, from Meditation at Lagunitas

#Poetry #RobertHaas