I started what felt like dozens of poems as I was falling asleep, like shooting stars they appeared out of the dark, but my arms were too tired and I did not get them down on paper and I need a better notebook for moments like that because I felt absolutely flooded with them and I do not know if they are still floating around in my brain or if they are dissolved, words pulled apart again ready to be reused, like a deconstructed poem made with a magnetic poetry set.
That liminal space between awake and asleep opens doors to secret places and sometimes, I suppose, the secrets want to be kept as they are. If I try to grasp at what these poem seeds were I do not think I would do much other than wear out my brain, and so I will move on and create new poems seeds and maybe one day I will recognize one, or maybe it will appear, disguised by waking hours.
I capture many poem seeds, some turn into saplings, some grow strong and hardy roots, some wither on the vine, and some, like those of the night, vanish before they have been seen, before they can be harvested, but they reach out and touch me anyway, because I wake with the knowing that they were there, that they visited. And I live with the hope that one day, if they are ready, if they so choose, they will come again. I need a better net for catching them, like a child awaiting sighting of the tooth fairy.
Liminal spaces, yes, and here I sit awake and somewhat bleary-eyed and I write of the stories that do not want to be told, and I write of how my mind works, and I learn the futility of grasping and so I move forward, always, though sometimes my heart tugs my eyes to the past. It is a balancing act, this moving forward and looking back. Looking back can be like looking down and you can lose your balance, stumble, fall into the darkness of tangled memory, and struggle for moments, days, weeks, years, to regain your footing and resume your march forward without the burdens of the past.
And the cycles continue – those of night and day, of seasons, of planet turning, no matter how fast or slow you live your life, whether you find yourself stuck in one moment for eternity or you recreate and reinvent yourself with every breath. And all the possibilities between those poles, like possibilities and existence of all there is between the north and south pole. Such vast diversity, life, experience, this brilliant planet holds.
And up to the stars we look and cannot even begin to fathom all that the universe holds. And a few poems began spinning their webs last night, within the brain that resides in this body, that controls the hand that writes these words and there is a universe inside of me too, and it is the same, and it is all connected, dreamlike, in ways both tangible and unseen. And the words spill out now, flowing like river into sea, without thought, with pure, deep, knowing and oh if I could write like this forever but
I know the moment passes and I will awaken out of this reverie of language into the day before me with its space and its tasks and its love and its hardships and all of it comes welcome because it is fodder for new poem seeds that may appear in the liminal space tonight, that may be caught on the page if I am ready or may float away again if they are not.
And all is well because the muse is here, inside me, with every breath, whether she is asleep or awake. That I do believe. And there are moments, like this one, when she gifts me a glorious bounty and I bow in reverence and gratitude and my hand does not tire and the world falls away and here I am, and nowhere else, and for that moment, however long it lasts, I am present to it above all else and I am nourished by it and live this way more fully than when I grasp and try to understand the pile of thought, of action, of everything in the outer world.
Here, with my words, I find an inner calm, and I prepare myself for all the poem seeds that come my way….
