This week the skies were generous over drought stricken Southern California. Some of my neighbors complained, saying rain makes them blue, but I opened the windows so I could listen to it fall. The fire in my fireplace occasionally crackled and hissed when drops made their way down the chimney. However, the thunder frightened my dog enough that she battered her way out of the yard while I was at work. When I came home, she was bruised and soaked to the skin. The sodden slope of the hill next to my house became a concern through the night of steady downpour, and the flooded viaducts, I reasoned, would hinder my commute. So Thursday I indulged in a day off to watch over home, hillside, hearth and pet, and to take a long morning nap while I was at it.
Roy Lichtenstein's patinated bronze Sleeping Muse is from 1983, well after his comic book days. Its perfect balance imparts a sense of restfulness to the viewer, exactly as it should, and exactly as I felt beneath my duvet. I find similar poise in these lines by Denise Levertov:
An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear.
- Denise Levertov, The Breathing
