Becoming Light
Hamilton, Carol
Becoming Light "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...
...As when we are no longer weighted down with wants...
...Carol Hamilton Commc iweal 18 August 13,1999...
...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...
Vol. 126 • August 1999 • No. 14
