The Jagged Edge
right at my feet it broke
the darkness, and one half
weight was suspended
over the void that seeped
into bright space with
trailings and leavings,
endings of the shadow -
and the other half was
sound on dry land, terra
firma to the soul, anchored
there still as a swaying
tree - and the light was
a starburst overhead
and the green grew like
a tide crossing the plain
and so I existed between
the twain - all my life,
the stretching black so
easy to topple in to
soundlessness and the long
unending fall, yet the
solid foot held me
stuck to the light that
would not let me go -
and the movings, the
quickenings, the passing
colours and the journeys
that held me in their
rails, their arms, all the
clash of sights and sounds
I saw, were me, were
my time.
and yet the collision came,
of dark and light
of solid, and no substance
of noise and silence
of movement and nothing
and the flight held me there
between them, the
tension of my life like
a lodestone, like
a coiled spring
and they pulled me
in two - always - the
dark and the bright twin.
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