Becoming Light

Commonweal, August 13, 1999 by Carol Hamilton

"Let them learn how to live and die more lightly."

Czeslaw Milosz

Mists rise in the valleys, skim off

with the breath of farm ponds.

As when we are no longer weighted down

with wants. Even as gravity pulls

us closer to our mother, Gaea,

even as the flesh draws down, flattens,

squeezes bony discs, compacts them,

we must levitate, glide across that distance,

smell that lap of death as waters

wash and waste the shore,

the eyes see farther, can now

make out the riffles on the far bank

as the fisherman slides in

on a muted motor's momentum.

Whole peoples have let go,

drifted off like dry leaves,

whole species slipped away,

and in the night, while we slept,

the incredible weight of a woman,

all of her, disappeared, all her words

and prejudices and opinions

and determinations and plans,

and projects and memories

and wants all evaporated.

On good days,

I rehearse this moment,

lift the weights one by one,

test their densities in my palm,

raise a wetted finger to the wind.