Patricia Youngblood: Liminal

Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge
Wells, Maine  2016

The tidal marsh takes its own time and

space to mediate between land and water,

offers not boundaries but margins, pliant

and permeable. Where there is forest,

it embraces that as well, meanders gracefully

through and around.

Despite a bright September drought

these woods remain opulent in mid-afternoon,

pathways flat and smoothed by pilgrim feet

like mine, learning to twine through forest, look

down and beyond at tides and waving grasses,

holes dug into stream banks and tree roots by

whatever creatures sleep in them,

wait for us to leave.

Green light shines through pastel intimations

of fiery autumn, through boughs that

shouldn’t be drought-browned but are.

The tidal stream carrying not nearly enough

water back to ocean whispers, shh … shh …

the sea and I are still here.

Copyright 2017 Patricia Youngblood

.