Originally posted 4/14/2004.

between flirt and affair
between laughter and terror
between the end of the backward rock of the chair
and the start of the backward fall

is the land where you live

before the light wakes up
when your sense is bridging
the space between
nothing and something

is the only time there is

it takes patience
to live this wholly incomplete way
to hang on the day’s pendulum
without falling off

what some call the great unknown

is there such a thing as a marigold’s prayer?
what is an antelope’s last thought
before hitting the wall at full run
unable to turn aside?

the way things are in
this vast continent between the poles
of being and not being
of static and fluid

if you are alive
you cannot win
you are dying in the moment
as fast as you can and

though the wind sleeps

in the blue trance before dawn
something is always moving
at once toward and away
back and forth and up and down

and it only appears to be something other than you