Between Here and There

 

 

I was making a list of things

I’ve misunderstood

 

in life up until this point. Even

if I cannot count the number

 

of rivers crossed or the number

of intersections between here

 

and there, I will maintain

a decent general disposition

 

until something better

or worse presents itself. I am

 

no longer allowed to sleep

on my back. I am no

 

longer allowed to think aloud,

though there are ways one

 

can keep quiet and still find solace

in an off-white ceiling split up

 

in pieces by a fan. It’s the moment

between today and tomorrow

 

and it seems simple enough

to be a citizen of both.

The Story and Its Stillness

 

 

1.

 

 

Because this living exists

to devour each day carefully,

 

we spend most of our time

in the backyard hesitating into an autumn

we can barely begin to imagine.

 

Honestly, we’d prefer not to explain anything;

rather we’d prefer an understanding

 

be brought up from the dirt

like our notion of the present when

 

we’re in it and our ignorance

of the same moment

 

once it passes by.

A moment is only a mistake when held up

 

by the intention behind it. Now,

my mind careens off to another time

 

and another place, perhaps when I wasn’t fully eager

to accept such a ragged and normal sense of clarity.

 

 

2.

 

 

But now I’m stumbling over what it even

means to define or desire clarity. The birds

 

have their way. The streets and sidewalks

parcel up the world

into a manageable mess

 

we can call our own. Without a trace of sincerity

 

or irony, the sky tonight feels bold

in simply the fact that it is. And the verb “to be”

 

persists and haunts and exists

 

too well for our liking. During the day: not quite enough.

 

 

3.

 

 

You said an elegy should be

a type of exile,

 

but I am too new to the game

of mourning to agree.

 

The irretrievable moments

don’t seem so momentary

 

from this particular place

 

though with an eager view of the world,

one might see extraordinary things.

 

I feel less sure of the opposite

and of the forecast. Like

 

the flock of birds in Iowa

shifting beautifully

 

without order, nothing else seems

real or real enough. So few

 

times has chaos seemed so orchestrated

as it did that day in April. I wonder

 

where those birds find themselves now.

 

 

 

 

4.

 

 

And deep inside that sense

of wondering or supposing,

 

a stillness emerges free of the person

who thought it.

 

I have no way of explaining

the imagination or how the lens

 

of vocabulary

creates a space to pause and exist

forever in.

 

What I do know

 

is that the stillness of this moment

becomes more and more significant

 

with the distance it gains

from the person who created it.

 

A harbor is like that: nearby

and far away suddenly—not meant

 

for this world or for the words

that seek so desperately to contain it.