Edges

Oct 6 2018

It's safest here

far from the edge

on the flat terrain of sameness.

Not for me

any risk-taking, in-your-facing, leap-of-faithing

edginess.

No, it's the comfortable middle, muddling through.

I remember the drop-off

where I lost my nerve,

the sharp edge

of a rock-cut

and a sheer bottomless plunge;

inching up

on hands and knees

and peering over the brink,

sweaty-palmed, and trembling.

The fateful step

that marked before from after.

Like the flow edge, the journey's end

the change in phase of matter.

Not a bright line, but a pause,

where heat is lost

and water's not

solid, liquid, steam;

but becoming

            . . . in flux

                      . . . a state of in-between.

To-and-fro to the tipping point,

when an tiny seed

flash-freezes

and the universe is instantly ice.

In which we are all prehistoric insects,

as if caught in amber

just as we were

in that moment everything stopped.

The glass of water

I swallowed too fast

the clouds that turned to hail.

The scalding steam

the monster wave

the winter ice that failed.

The caustic fog

the blinding sleet

the streams becoming torrents.

The errant step

over the edge

I took, and failed to notice.

The nascent breath

slip into death

ebb into liminal blackness.

The before and the next

I question and fret

and try to make sense of, but can't.

The times I was tempted

and excuses invented

when I failed to take a chance.

How a tentative step

led to the rest

and so my journey began.

The boundaries bent

and borders I tested

when no one would let me pass.

The doors that were closed

the windows I broke

the rivers I bridged and dammed.

The envy and fear

the rush to be clear

so close to the edge

                   . . . and back.

(The image in the fourth paragraph – where I play around with changes of state in matter as a kind of edge or tipping point, and introduce water as a theme – actually comes from a real event. Here's a link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5288529/Horrific-aftermath-terrifying-ice-tsunami.html. The photo, however does not do this justice. I was originally made aware of this watching a BBC Earth documentary, and their video of the scene made a far stronger impression. I think another similar real life event – maybe even more so – would be Pompeii and Herculaneum.)