Encompassed

Please enjoy this poem from Denise Levertov. I encourage you to read it two or three times slowly and to notice a few deliberate breaths between each reading. With each breath, let the world "encompassed" resonate within you as reality that holds your life always and everywhere.

Kirk Webb
The Celtic Center Director

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In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being
- by Denise Levertov

Birds afloat in air’s current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir our wings
rising, ruffled - but only the saints
take flight. We cower
in cliff-crevice or edge out gingerly
on branches close to the nest. The wind
marks the passage of holy ones riding
that ocean of air. Slowly their wake
reaches us, rocks us.
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.