A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of yoru hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cuppped palms, trusting you will not injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes perhaps
this gift is your answer.

- Denise Levertov



From: Sands of the Well, New Directions, 1996