No-Man's Land - April 2 2022

 

No-Man's Land

April 2 2022

When you are between worlds.

Perhaps caught in the no-man's land

that divides two states

of being.

Perhaps it's age,

and you've either fallen behind

or fallen prey to it.

Perhaps you've dropped through the cracks

and are feeling unmoored,

a sense of detachment

that makes you feel unreal.

For me, it's belonging;

a foot in two worlds

and not knowing which.

No people

with whom I can be myself,

no place

that feels like home;

an anomie

and rootlessness

that is disconcertingly centrifugal.

There are landmines

in this liminal space,

barbed wire guards the escapes.

Where battles have been fought,

and the walking wounded

still carry the weight

of imagined wrongs,

dwell

on well-nursed grievances.

Where the absence of war

is not the same as peace.

And where it's possible

that the fortified border

was made by no one but me.

But there is beauty here, as well.

Because this no-man's land

left fallow for ages

has returned to the wild;

reclaimed by animals

dense with plants.

A state of nature,

where the rare human who enters

elicits curiosity

instead of fear.

A good place

for a vagrant like me

to have wandered into.

A crack in space and time

I can rest for awhile

before I set my mind

to moving on.