Rumination
There’s a room somewhere that’s mine
if I can find it—
I don’t visit often
the houseplants are dried
the dishes have been pushed aside
someone has left a cup behind
disturbed my order of things
but it’s still mine, my darkened room
though I’ve forgotten
which door it is, which avenue
there are no numbers
I wander at night searching
until I hit upon the right one
I know it again, hidden, lost
I am lost again
I must water the plants
must straighten up, if only
I came more often
opened the curtains
sat on the sofa
put my feet up
never enough time to settle in
never claim it although I paid
a whole year in advance
I should stay this time—
but it’s enough to know
I can always come back
let some light into the silence.
Liminality
the time between ‘before’ and ‘next’, a constant
transition that doesn’t know when transformation
ends, a moonless night
we are ambiguous beings disoriented
by an in-between stage like a rite of passage
paused, unable to name something wholly
we are fragments of others, threshold people
waiting to grow wings
standing in a metaphysical rain
hovering between poles like
a blurred boundary zone
neither dusk nor twilight exactly
a bardo between lives, a plurality
of stances, our feet planted on thick tree roots
or floating over an ocean cliff
we hang unbalanced, waiting to coalesce
into a new shape, a cocoon turned butterfly
or sporophyte, greenness out of a seed.
