Poet Laura: Poems for Liminal Times

As I write, the sun is already a little later to rise, and this day is rainy and darkish well into my second cup of coffee. The high will only be about 72 degrees in New Jersey after a hot and humid summer. It’s starting, this liminal time as summer ends and fall begins, although I’m sure we’ll still have that dance of swelter and chill that lasts well into October. Cue “cheers” and “boos,” depending on if you are a member of Team Beach Bum or Team Apple Picking.

I noticed this week a few yellow leaves, a few even drier, twirling to the ground after a shower, floating on the breeze, and I wanted to tell them to slow down! Life has enough rush for all of us, and it’s still early in the seasonal transition.

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

—Stanley Kunitz, excerpted from End of Summer

Although we can feel like we are constantly engaged in the to-do lists of daily living, we actually live so much time in the liminal: the space between. The space between arriving at a doctor’s appointment and waiting to be seen. The space between gathering goods and waiting in a slow line to pay. Waiting for test results, a letter to arrive in the mail, for guests to arrive before a special dinner. For a baby to be born. For the next season of a Netflix series to be released. Sometimes, we can wait for a person to finish a thought before we’ve jumped in to reply. Poetry can help us in our liminal times.

Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.

—Philip Levine, excerpted from What Work Is

Think about it. How much time do you spend waiting? And, how patiently do you wait? Poetry can help get the most out of times we need to surrender to whatever process fills our in-between spaces. We would never crack open an egg to pull the baby chick out, or tear petals off a rose before it unfolds on the stem. We know the butterfly needs to wriggle and push itself out of its chrysalis to survive, but when it comes to our own lives, we are less likely to surrender control over timing and outcome.

The courage of a river to continue belief
In the slow fall of ground,
Always falling farther
Toward the unseen ocean.

—John O’Donohue, excerpted from In Praise of Water, from To Bless the Space Between Us

***

This September marks seven years since my father passed from ALS. Our family, while it is essentially the same, has changed in so many incremental ways over the past seven years, while his life has stayed the same as the day he left us. We felt fortunate, in an ironic sense, that Dad spent two full days with us in palliative care at our local hospital. My mom, sister and I had the support we needed, and there was no more worry or striving to stop the avalanche of decline in his last months. And although dad was unable to speak, and was moving in and out of consciousness, we could tell he was aware of what was going on around him. A party! Family friends, and friends we call family, gathered around the bed in our small room, sometimes 10 or 15 at a time, sometimes noisily overflowing into the hallway. Telling funny stories, saying their goodbyes. Sometimes Dad’s heart rate changed, or his face pinked up, or a tear slipped down his cheek when someone leaned in close. We had trays of meatball sandwiches and cold cuts, cookies and pastries, raucous laughter and lots of long hugs. Hand-holding. Nurses would stop in to keep a grip on the crowd, and end up staying for a quick bite. Or we’d bring them food to the station. They commented that they had never heard sounds of laughter and joy as they did coming from his room. We know that’s how he wanted it.

Once everyone left, Mom, my sister and I spent the night squished together on a sofa bench meant for one, rolled up in thick blankets from home. At three am, as we were still awake, but quiet, the air in the room was so full of energy, as if Dad had already escaped his wasting body. I had a vision of us three women, strong, leaning together on a shoreline with wilderness behind us, while Dad, on his own piece of the island drifting slowly, peacefully away. We were bound together while physically separate, and there was a strange peace knowing there was nothing more we could do for him.

Now the darker cloth is drawn from closets,
And we who loved the world must learn
The language of absence: days foreshortened, empty rooms,
The irrevocable distance
Between the goodbye and the letting go.

—Joe Bolton, excerpted from Elegy at Summer’s End

I wrote more about my father’s passing here, and how poetry worked it’s way into my healing process after he passed.

***

So while the calendar flips to September, and new schedules are undertaken, summer leans in, gives a few more bursts of heat and then slips into autumn. Take some poetry with you, tuck it in your bag, and turn to it as a companion during the wait.

Photo by Photo by Mike McCune, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Michelle Ortega. 

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Michelle Rinaldi Ortega

As a quiet child and angst-y teen, Michelle loved to read and write. When poetry found her again about fifteen years ago, the Tweetspeak community brought her multiple resources on journey, from content to courses to in-person meetups. She hosted Tweetspeak’s very first Mischief Cafe! A speech-language pathologist by day, Michelle's avocations include travel across the country and the globe, as well as digital and black and white film photography. Michelle is the author of Don't Ask Why from Seven Kitchens Press. Her microchapbook, Tissue Memory, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. You can find her work at www.michelleortegawrites.com and on IG @michellebelleslp.

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