While Reading Levertov with a Ladybug in the February Snow

While Reading Levertov with a Ladybug in the February Snow

I want to know where the ladybug goes

when she drops off the light and into the snow

of this white paper--a book of Levertov’s

poems: Breathing the Water.  Maybe to the glow                                                                                                                   of the one close light and the black and white

photo of it: a car maybe and a hand

reaching--the negative of a positive, it’s hard

to know what’s going on or the motive

and maybe we’re only supposed to be provoked

because who aside from fish (and do

they? Really?) breathe water or even

want or need to?  I heard her, the ladybug, ping

against the light and then fall and she’d not any-

where but I’ll thumb up that title poem and if she

were a person I’d read it to her--no--maybe  because

she’s not and it’s so quiet--and I’ve been sitting

here for three hours anyway I need to so let’s see:

there’s the one about Jesus on the cross, she’s

weaving him into a Julian of Norwich world of thieves

and diseases and the lengths of sufferings

six hours of hanging versus days and days

of a little boy’s cancer ward, or a story not

in her life but in her memory of her dead sister

born cold and still or the one of her seeing the body

beautiful of her friend in the steam of a sauna

how naked she seemed a saint in all her nearly

fifty years of lines and sighs and cries and closer

still in the ecstasy of Caedmon out in the barn

with all the rest of the struck dumb and how he

glowed when the angel or some random ember

touched his tongue--but not one, not what I skimmed

and walked on, was of breathing water.  Air, fire, steam,

close, but no.  Maybe the ladybug’s disappointed--

she’s nowhere now.  She’s tired of being

too big on a too small copper doorstop of Moby Dick.

She’s found someplace else to breathe.  Maybe 

she knows more than me, how because it’s only

February she shouldn’t be here, only see

there’s been this warm spell.  Yesterday it was 55.

But dawn--I hear them starting now, is plows

and engines and a hunkering down for the blizzard

coming.  It’s dark out and still. It’s early.  A long

time has gone since I read Levertov the first time.

I bet two decades or more.  I bet I was coming into

February that time too. Today something is too familiar.

I can’t be sure; a lot of water’s gone by since then.

A lot of spots and hollow carapaces .  A lot of living.

A lot.  And maybe, occasionally, because it's all about

art, a naked lady beautifully wide.  She’s in the shell

of a boat.  She’s idle.  She’s moored and it’s beginning 

to snow.  There’s some kelp on her bow, on her 

battered cuddy.