Boundary
by Cedar Brant
When I wake it is a pond of open pause.
Before my mind begins constructing
something that might hold something
else. Sometimes it feels full and sometimes
empty. It’s easy to believe in a world without gaps.
Then I feel my own pinholes breathe absence.
I began to write to you
and it is you that is sometimes me
and sometimes everyone else. Sometimes the land.
I felt my head lift off the earth when I heard
your poems which felt like I was leaving.
It was only the sea at night,
the sky with strings of light that were rivers
reflecting off the plains where tall grass
once hid the eyes of horses.
This night could be the sea of grass
or nothing but going. You read words
and let the pages drop like sheets
of ice when you finish. You shone
a flashlight in our eyes that might
have been the face of a god that might
have been a light through the water
so language did not measure distance.
In a way, I don’t understand.
My chest as heavy as it is light
which makes me feel the world,
sometimes the depth, sometimes the distance.
I don’t know which one is real.