Poetry Thursday: Denise Levertov

The Change

For years the dead
were the terrible  weight of their absence,
the weight of what one had not put in their hands.
Rarely a visitation – dream or vision -
lifted that load for a moment, like someone
standing behind one and briefly taking
the heft of a frameless pack.
But the straps remained, and the ache -
though you can learn not to feel it
except when malicious memory
pulls downward with sudden force.
Slowly there comes a sense
that for some time the burden
has been what you need anyway.
How flimsy to be without it, ungrounded, blown
hither and thither, colliding with stern solids.
And then they begin to return, the dead:
but not as visions. They’re not
separate now, not to be seen, no,
it’s they who see: they displace,
for seconds, for minutes, maybe longer,
the mourner’s gaze with their own. Just now,
that shift of light, arpeggio
on ocean’s harp -
not the accustomed bearer
of heavy absence saw it, it was perceived
by the long-dead, long absent, looking
out from within one’s wideopen eyes.

~ Denise Levertov, Selected Poems

The photograph is from a series taken by my bloggie friend Susanna – when I got back from Seattle this amazing image was waiting for me on my doorstep!