"shelter from the assaultive world"...."starting with unexpected harmonies,revelations"

again from the writer's almanac today
A Clearing

by Denise Levertov

What lies at the end of enticing
country driveways, curving
off among trees? Often only
a car graveyard, a house-trailer,
a trashy bungalow. But this one,
for once, brings you
through the shade of its green tunnel
to a paradise of cedars,
of lawns mown but not too closely,
of iris, moss, fern, rivers of stone rounded
by sea or stream,
of a wooden unassertive large-windowed house.
The big trees enclose
an expanse of sky, trees and sky
together protect the clearing.
One is sheltered here
from the assaultive world
as if escaped from it, and yet
once arrived, is given (oneself
and others being a part of that world)
a generous welcome.
It's paradise
as a paradigm for how
to live on earth,
how to be private and open
quiet and richly eloquent.
Everything man-made here
was truly made by the hands
of those who live here, of those
who live with what they have made.
It took time, and is growing still
because it's alive.
It is paradise, and paradise
is a kind of poem; it has
a poem's characteristics:
inspiration; starting with the given;
unexpected harmonies; revelations.
It's rare among
the worlds one finds
at the end of enticing driveways.

Yesterday as I was listening to the radio ,I heard on npr a hopeful story about this past year's rampaging oil spillage in the Gulf.
Much unharnassed,unnecessary destruction went amok,but the journalist pointed out, something unexpected and that is the story of the methane gasthat was leaking out on the ocean floor killing life. There are bacteria on the ocean floor that assimilate methane,use it for their own consumptipn, to grow and replicate. As thesubstrate of methane increased,more bacteria proliferated,with more food available for them, so ultimately nature kicked in and cleaned up much of the toxic methane. That is only a fragment of what needs to be,for restoration to occur on the ocean floor and shore,but it is a ray of hope amidst the muck.
So as I read this poem this morning, i grasped onto the words,"shelter from an assaultive world","a paradigm of how to live on earth"."starting with unexpected harmonies,revelations".

This year, the theme,the raison d'etre is to look for hope,because if one looks,one does find...at the end of a driveway.or even on the bottom of an oil spilled sea floor. May hope always be that gentle wind that rests upon our shoulders whispering to us to seek her out...