In-between
to Padraig O Tuama, “in-between the sun and moon”
It’s a fog the wind blows
tatters that stream through my fingers
nameless, gray.
It’s an absence
when I reach for a word
not the Great Forgetting but a small.
It’s a fear when I open the door
A fear grown pale—the man is dead
under the door only a wind.
It’s a shame that comes sharp
but all of us are gone—the girl I was
the people I loved, the people I harmed.
It’s blue sky where there were clouds
clouds where there was sun
clouds that shift from elephant to fish.
It’s asking who was to blame
and it’s everyone and no one
lizard on the pavement and the pavement.
It’s saying I should have done better
I should be doing better
and clouds are floating by the window.
It’s my mother in the nursing ward
Are you my daughter?
Was she my mother?
It’s wind, wind over the water
something coming and I can’t say what
something that slackens and comes again full.
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.
Did Confucius say that
let those words be written down?
Did I write those words here
handed memory to memory
millennia-long mistake?
People are dying—people, a world
and I fear for them, reach for them
but we stream nameless onto the wind.
—Sarah Webb
