from Evolutions: poems by Cheryl Pallant

Cultivating the Space Between

It’s the light in the sky that conjures the eye that transmits the heart
that foots the thrill where humanity thrives. It’s the glow in the go

that propels the walk that treads the start that upends despair where
lavender grows. It’s the reminder not the remainder, the being with

the doing, the tectonic shift that rocks a county and permits a synaptic
link. In the brain on the land where my family farmed for decades for

neurons for atoms and cells. Along the fence along the quiet along the
stream along the chug along the bottle along the road. In the places

between the spaces for breath in the nerves along the spine. In knowing
the unknowable and nodding to the frame splintered, the road buckling,

the vines bold in their grow. Be careful what you witches forth and how
you minister to need and wonton claims linked to chains linked to garrulous

fecal mounds far from compost. What’s near is far and out of sigh may be
close in mind. My body is nobody is everybody our back finds affront by

odors, the least of my worries becoming the heist of yours. Find a way to
befriend warts and rain and an inflated ego losing its hold. Flimsy that or

finesse wine to uncork. When I look toward you I look like love. When
you look untoward I flee until blush returns heart to hara the art of joy,

the call rewilding the tame unwrapping presents everywhere on the floor,
table, and mat because what matters involves the drift, melt, sink hole with

heart on the rise.

What’s Okay

If it’s not in the longing it’s in the lasting. If it’s not in permanence it’s in the permeable skin of thoughts dissolving in unpoured liquids. Things falls apart when they congeal. I heard her scream but then I didn’t. She doesn’t know how to hold him inside her nor how to hold herself in. If she were here to say she would stay so but she stumbled on the uneven pavement. If he knew the surgical procedure he would make the incision but his virtues excluded precision and parallel parking.

This is no laughing matter. She lived in the land of men. Men lived at the hand of meant. They corrupted the reach and grab and muscled weight like a barge full of the uncontainable shipped from afar and docking at a nearby port.

She said she was okay. She said she likes her eggs scrambled but was out of creme. I would have told her I was writing nothing but she opened the shades and grazed her forehead with the back of her hand.

He said he was okay. He said he likes the boxes placed in the attic but the door led only to a basement which was locked and he forgot the keys. I would have shared that I wring my hands and dance the burn of my belly but he shook open the drawer to a faded map with black marks concealing names of towns.

It’s a fluke that I laughed. There’s a hint of lunacy to the spittle that never reached the sink. There’s a stool where we both could sit and face the unforgivable. I’m okay except when lightning strikes the oak in the front of the house and breaks a branch and blisters burn during clean up. I’m okay when you don’t pull the trigger, when a truck careening down the highway applies brakes, when the space between words destroys annihilation and dreams us as a better idea and no idea at all.