☀️ The Daily Boost #897
Please share
The Daily Boost (published weekdays) is one of the newsletters of The Raft, the online community of author Phyllis Cole-Dai. We Rafters ride the river of life buoyed by music, poetry, and other arts, plus water-drops of wisdom. Most everything here is free, but patrons (paid subscribers) get some special perks as a gesture of gratitude.
FOR THE NEW YEAR 1981
Denise Levertov
I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.
I need more.
I break off a fragment
to send you.
Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.
Only so, by division,
will hope increase,
like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered—
of grace.
(My thanks to Denise Levertov, via Living Wittily.)
The Gentle Nudge
ANYTIME: Lay a blessing stone here. (Learn about our blessing-stone practice at this link.)
THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)
JANUARY 13: “The Unfolding” with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Details here.
THRU 1/31/25: Write a cento for a midwinter cento celebration. Details here.
I’m old enough to remember that time well. I had recently moved to Washington during the Carter years, when DC was bustling with progressive change. The Reagan onslaught caught many of us unprepared. At that new year, Carter was sleeplessly working to get 66 Americans out of Tehran safely. Many of us were expecting to lose our jobs, and many did. So I wish I’d had this poem then. This turn of the year feels eerily similar to that day’s political drama.
This poem is a seed to.plant into the dark earth. It will grow and bloom. Into our hearts!