Saturday, January 3, 2015

Betwixt, Between

      There's an interspace that exists between one experience and another, or one place and another.  You're between two spheres of reality.  I left Spain and am back in Atlanta, but not quite yet.  Decades ago the trip across the Atlantic was long enough so that adjustment to time and space took place over a week or so.  Now you wake up in one country and go to sleep in another.
      Hence, I'm reading a day old Vanguardia newspaper with my head still buzzing with the noise of an airplane engine.  In the days when I lived in Spain and made the trip in reverse, the intensity of the change and the jetlag was even worse.  That's when I discovered the novels of William Gibson (I have to read his latest).  What I was experiencing- a help conscious, half exhausted place was reflected perfectly in the virtual darkness of his novels. 
      In just a short time, my trip will be a memory, fading fast, so for these last hours I can cling to the languages, flashes of places and people I saw.  In the same way we are leaving behind another year that we can't cling to but can  remember with joy. 


Here's a poem from my first chapbook:




 


What I´ve Lost  


                          Leaving Europe                  


 


Paths lead


from town to


medieval town,


cathedral bones


stick out,


bells toll centuries.


The solemnity


of a saint´s day


procession,


We crowd to touch


the body of christ


while drums


pound out


God´s arrival. 


 


Ocean jet buzz


brings me across


to America,


empire of things,


following the white


highway line


into deep deep sleep.





5 comments:

  1. Yes, nice poem!. The Atlantic is not a lake yet but in both sides the lives of people run still in different contrast and countries are there to be compared.

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  2. Good post and poem. Never read any Gibson. I hope you are liking Atlanta!

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  3. Thanks Alex! I'm getting used to Atlanta.

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