February 1-2, 2023

Threshold

The bardo between death and birth is only one

There’s the dying itself/rebirth/dream/meditation

Bound by thought/returned to stillness

Between birth and death is another

Everywhere/nowhere to go

An airport/train station

Kakuma/Ifo/Za’atari/Tapachula/Kyiv subway

A stick withholding covid/pregnancy status

Falling in/out of love

Outside the delivery room/by the hospice bed

Transplant waitlist/DNR order

Stray heartbeat morphing into chaos/pulled back into line

By pill/luck/electricity

Resting in the out-breath/shredded lungs dragging at the air

This video/that video/excruciating endless loops

Jury rooms bulging with history:

Someone’s friend/parent/partner/child was murdered by

Someone’s friend/parent/partner/child

Over and over and over and over and over

Each decision/hesitation/gunshot/glance/plan/birdsong/nightmare/prayer

Leaves a whisper/scar/gift/amputation

Hanging in the space between

To be honored/forgotten/shared/twisted

Imbolc

Ignoring all the vanishing betweens is like clapping on the one and three

You can’t dance to it

Celebrate the off beat/snap your fingers/sway your hips

I don’t get the opportunity to notice when the sheep are pregnant

I do notice when I need a bath

Nothing to do with dirt/everything to do with cleansing

I stop for the nodding hellebore/snowdrop

These days the spidering witch hazel has already come/gone

Before the groundhog shows/hides their head

But I can still feel the between-ness/power of that bloom shaded in snow

Living soil supporting/feeding us all even as ki and kin die in multitudes

The goddess Brigid tends writers and other wounded/domesticated animals

I scribble in the dark/candlelight/monitor’s glow

The groundhog holds us in winter’s stillness /leads us to spring’s clamor