Nicole PaullI tilt my head,
bare my throat –
to a kiss or a dagger?
Watch the slowly wheeling sky
tick away the seconds:
A countdown? A stopwatch?
Neither – or both?
Who am I to know –
I, who used to think I knew?
I was weighed in the balance
and found wanting, it seems.
Or was it himself he was weighing?
How can I tell, when I live where
closeness and distance
twist and twine, like
strands of the same rope?
There’s a gash in the sky
and I don’t know how to fix it.
Or even if it is mine to fix.
Foolish Star,
to reach for trinkets
dangling from a lion’s paw
and leave a gash in your wake
where once light lived!
– What does this have to do with my garden? Joel and I ate supper outside, at the patio table, as we like to do in summertime. And afterwards, Joel brought the dirty dishes sink-side for later and I lingered and absorbed my surroundings as I am wont to do. I like to slide down in the chair just far enough that my head rests comfortably against the cushion at my back and watch whatever shows up.
Last night, there were swifts tracing graceful, swooping patterns below layers of gossamer clouds, dragonflies flying straight and true – their destinations seemingly the only thing on their minds (I wonder what their destinations are), a loose flock of blackbirds heading toward the river. It so happens that the string on our patio umbrella broke. Without the umbrella there, my view of the sky was wide open. Everything I saw was in movement.
The words came to me as effortlessly as the steady stream of airplanes on the flight path above me, on their final descent to the airport, some forty miles distant.
As for meaning, I know what it means to me. You get to assign your own – if, indeed, there is one – for yourself.