Denise Levertov, Seattle and my undying love of poetry

Many years ago I spent a summer in Seattle. My heart broken and stick thin, I went to work and tried to forget.
I loved Seattle like I had loved no other city. I loved that I could wear a sweater in June, always find good Vietnamese food, and lived rent free with my sister. I bought many things I still own there, including my Victrola.

I made up stories in my head about my life and surroundings, wrote long letters to the one who had broken my heart, and eventually decided to fall in love with the boy who rode the bus with me every morning. We never did speak, even though we both boarded the bus on Mercer Island and got off on the same stop downtown, swallowed up by the tall buildings where hundreds of thousands of people worked every day. I imagined he worked as an office messenger or a graphic designer for some fashionable firm. I would go to Pike Place Market at lunchtime in hopes of possibly seeing him, but after a while I gave up and started spending my lunch breaks at the public library.

I was obsessed with poetry then. I’d check out the collected poetry of Elizabeth Bishop or Sharon Olds or Marianne Moore and stay up all night reading. I remember picking up Denise Levertov, and found the perfect poem to send to the one who I, though I didn't want to admit it, still loved. It was an epic poem. I don’t even know what collection it came from. But one of the sections was titled POSTCARD, which I copied out into a notebook. I can still recall it from memory:

It’s not that I can’t get by without you
it’s just that I wasn’t lonesome
before I met you.
It’s something to do with salt losing its savor
when half of the world
one wants to share
stays in one’s pocket. Half
a crispy delicious bacon sandwich
saved. But for—Oh, like Shelley’s
posy of dewy flowers. Remember,
how he turns to give it—
Ah, to whom?

In fact, I made it into my own postcard and mailed it in hopes that the damage done between us could be mended. But some things are irretrievably broken. And now, whenever a relationship or a friendship ends, I think of the poem.  That place when there is nothing left to say, yet being acutely aware that there is a hole that will never be completely filled. Wanting to turn and share a private joke or story you know they would have loved, but doesn't matter because whatever you once had is over.

Yesterday I found a copy of the postcard I sent. Maybe if you ask kindly, I’ll send you one.