Questions Before Dark
{Jeanne Lohmann}
Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?
These are the days of not knowing what day it is.
Some of them feel independent and clear, wholly delineated from the others. (It is not “Day 4,” it is Thursday, an actual day in the life.) On these days, I have had a clear thought, followed an idea, engaged in a way that stimulated learning and connection.
Some of them feel smudged and smooshed, the blurred remains of a bug on the windshield. On these days, I have read the news…all of it. I have thought the dark thoughts, felt the dark feelings, watched myself drift – not float, but drift, right into the oncoming car of my lower self.
It’s a big hurried rush of not knowing, all of this.
What am I to make of this perpetual liminal space?
Answer: I get to choose every day, be it smudged or clear, how to respond to this reality.
I get to do that.
Today, and tomorrow.
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