The Thread

Catrin Welz Stein

The Thread

Something is very gently,

invisibly, silently,

pulling at me-a thread

or net of threads

finer than cobweb and as

elastic. I haven't tried

the strength of it. No barbed hook

pierced and tore me. Was it

not long ago this thread

began to draw me? Or

way back? Was I

born with its knot about my

neck, a bridle? Not fear

but a stirring

of wonder makes me

catch my breath when I feel

the tug of it when I thought

it had loosened itself and gone.

Denise Levertov

“A stirring of wonder…”  This poem might sound like diaphanous sweet-talk, if it weren’t for “Was I born with its knot about my neck, a bridle?” Levertov's poem asks questions we recognize from somewhere. The “silent, gentle tugging”, doesn’t that seem familiar? “ I haven’t tried the strength of it”. That line intrigues me. Spider silk is one of the strongest threads known. So what is this thread? What is it that we can forget sometimes, and yet remains, and in a shocking moment can stop us in our tracks and drag us back, or around? What is this longing, this sense of something calling, something waiting to be known? Unlike "The Way It Is" by William Stafford, in which the thread is something we hold to and follow, in this poem, the thread holds us, draws us. It's that same turn-things-inside-out theme that I love so much and look for everywhere.