What I miss when I don't wake early

Looking, Walking, Being by Denise Levertov from Sands of the Well (New Directions)

"The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in."
Mark Rudman

I look and look.
Looking's a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That's
a way of breathing.

breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.


I rarely wake up and know what poem I'm going to post.  Usually it takes some musing, flipping through volumes of poems, surfing poetry sites on the internet, and lots of typing and deleting until I find that something that plucks at my heart strings and vibrates in my soul.  But then again, rarely do I wake up early, jump out of bed, throw on clothes and am out walking on the beach by 6:30 am.  This morning both happened.  Maybe it was the inspiration of the big pink sun rising in the east.  Maybe it was the pod of dolphins accompanying me as I walked along the shore.  (They were in the water, not on the beach of course.)

As I was watching the sun unfold above a horizon of purple clouds, I didn't think about how far I'd been, how far I had to go.  I was only aware of the present moment-- looking, walking, being.