serendipti's Diaryland Diary

7:52 p.m. - Wednesday, Jul. 13, 2005

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the secret

so I have been trying to kick a bad habit. And I will intentionally be vague about it, but it is a habit so ingrained, so much a part of me, that I have been incapable of doing it myself. Laurel has been helping me, and she told me last night, that I need to stop it. She said for 72 hours, I need to abstain from this habit, this habit that is not good for me, and keeps me mired in a place I do not want to be in. She said that the first 72 hours is crucial, at least that is what they tell smokers. I feel like I am a 65 year old who is trying to kick a 2 pack a day habit acquired when I was in high school.
tough tough tough.
So I called Laurel at a moment of weakness, and here is the poem she read to me:

The Secret

Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

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