"fighting for two worlds"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting some examples of my work on Fridays in April.
Here is "fighting for two worlds."

fighting for two worlds

She believes there’s
an opening, an
aperture in the
evening shadows
where everything happens.
She says there’s
no word for it
but I know there is
and that word is
tenebre.
Not quite a place,
not quite a thing,
not a time or a state,
it’s none of these, yet all.
It’s the hinge between
day and night,
the safe place
you’ve searched for,
the eye of the storm.
It’s a chance to
catch your breath
and hide from the
screaming, clawing
day and the
novocaine night.
Don’t look at it,
try to look at
the space between
what you know and
what you don’t.
I know it’s there—
I can’t be the only one
who hears the voices
telling me to hurry,
who feels a veiled force
pushing my pen, my brush,
the paint, my mind,
carrying me along
on unseen rapids.
There must be others
who feel this
drive, this swell
from the middle.
You must be out there—
let me hear from you,
you who work this
foundry with me,
you who hear
the instructions to
give shape and form
to these sacred shadows
and follow them as I do.
We are building
a link through our
exquisite twilight, a link
between here and there.
We are learning
to tie knots,
to join planks,
to cut stone. We are
fighting for two worlds,
stretching them toward
the deepest part,
the heart of it all.
And to those of you
who only see your
flat world, resist the
Nightshade, the Belladonna,
and don’t despair;
we are working hard
here in this place
where it’s always bedtime.
Soon, we will all travel
through impossibility
and still remain alive.

©JEF 1998