Where a word leads: "abeyance"

This morning I planned to write about what is becoming an annual May event: the holding pattern. My brain kept bringing me the word "abeyance." This led to memories of a poem and a poet I studied in great depth long, long ago. I couldn't find a poem with the title I recall, "In Abeyance," but I found this one. I thought I understood it when I was twenty. I didn't. Not at all.

The Ache of Marriage

Denise Levertov (1923 - 1997)

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,

are heavy with it,

      it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion

and are turned away, beloved,

each and each

It is leviathan and we

in its belly

looking for joy, some joy

not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of

the ache of it.

Sitting careless on a granary floor...

Poetry and I don't always get along. Give me a novel any day.Much poetry leaves me cold, but - ah - the few poems that call to me really call to me.

Today fall arrived. You must understand, this is not a gradual thing. Yesterday I wore shorts. Today, at 3 p.m., it was 48 degrees. It is drizzly and glorious.

And, to celebrate, I am going to reveal something very personal: one of those special poems.

Read it slowly, savor, and enjoy.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or, by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

-John Keats (1795-1821)

Dear poetry purists: I know the formatting isn't exactly right on this. Consider me "(d)rows'd with the fume of poppies" or something, but I can't get this program to indent the way it should, at least not tonight, and I'm going to bed. Hopefully, I'll be able to fix it tomorrow.