Letter to liminal places (a poem for those who feel in-between)
February 24, 2011
LETTER TO LIMINAL PLACES
You've brought the baby home
but you don't feel like real parents
the house you built is sold
and you don't know where you're moving to
the next step is obscured
windblown snow swirls in the dark
but remember the speckled orchid
which adorned your Passover table
after a year of dull leaves
beneath the stump of former glories
it has begun again
improbably to bloom.
I mentioned in a post a few days ago that I'd been working on a poem about liminal spaces, about the uncertainty of being between one thing and the next. The image which first sparked this poem (an image of the diploma being hung and framed while the person who earned it waits for the phone to ring) has been cut -- it was my ladder in to the poem, but I decided it doesn't actually belong in the poem.
Anyway: this is definitely a poem-in-progress, and I'm not convinced that this is its final shape, but aiming to post a poem here each week is good for me on levels both spiritual and creative, so I'm posting it. As always, I welcome responses on levels both literary and emotional/spiritual -- let me know what resonates for you.
This wasn't written in response to this week's Big Tent Poetry prompt, here's a link to this week's "Come One, Come All" post so you can see what others wrote.