with thanks to Rebecca Mullen for showing me the doors
And if a door closes
before another opens,
well, sometimes in the hall
between those doors
I find the precarious beauty
that can only be met
when I am not quite safe,
not quite certain, not quite
a self, and wholly here.
I’m talking tiny dust mote
in the deep field beauty—
beauty that refuses
to be named.
This is what it’s like
to learn to trust—
to live with one arm forward,
one arm back and feel
marvelously stretched,
perilously opened,
like a flute, like a kite,
like a wing.
