Transitionary Edges

Standing on the edge of a piece of land I love, brought there perhaps by a sunrise or sunset. Surely brought there by the pure strength of feeling I have at being present - where the force of its presence and my presence meets. But I can't stay here - I must move on to another present and presence.

I've been thinking about the feeling that builds in me around such times of change - like a gathering of  swallows - dipping and skimming, restless, readying themselves to leave. It's a meshing of wanting to stay, with the inevitability of having to go - an uncomfortable place that I have to sit with until my internal compass needle recalibrates. I name these feelings transitionary edges - where the sadness around loss and disconnection meets the hope of new possibilities. These edges of transition are real places for me, and it has helped me to name them, to inhabit them and to move on from them.

Fireflies

Fireflies -  the brief luminosity of any meaningful moment. Sometimes the hard edges of friendship bring us to difficult questions.

Fireflies

Fireflies in Central Park

brought me home 

along a night time path.

This city, so familiar, 

held me as a stranger

in a darkness brought on itself

and on our separate lives.

And where was home then?

Thirty seven stories up

into the sky's wilderness,

where the floors shook slightly,

and the woods of Wales

were miles away

from the East River.

Have we come so far 

from the fire we set and sat

with through the years?

Are we, oceans apart, 

picking the bones

of what is dead, or blowing

to life what is left in the ashes?

JT