“Separation” by W.S. Merwin
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
I love this short poem by Merwin. I think its brevity is what adds to the power of its feeling. He makes the eye of the needle take the whole fabric of the absence of the loved one. He understands the necessity, the visceral sense of absence, that needs to be threaded to time and yet once threaded there’s this eternal quality that now exists in the moment of missing someone in temporal time and missing them eternally. And, yes, even a simple act, like making tea, becomes a ritual of not only satisfying the self but being so fully aware of the other who is no longer close, a completion of two independent selves. I am also reminded of a great song from Rain Tree Crow, “Every Colour You Are,” and the lines: “My roads uncrossed, white lined and tarred, by believing in you, every colour you are.”