What happens when we, who love words,
come to find ourselves more alive
in the blank spaces
between the words?
At first is seems like a clever trick —
a break from the flow,
something to freshen the mind,
to stop and attend
to the eyelash lull
between two words.
The pause.
The millisecond between
inhale and exhale.
A little frightening for those uneasy in silence
to have any moment
alone with oneself —
best just to run straight past it,
avert the eyes,
continue the babble.
The brook keeps running
though there are gaps
between the stones on the bottom
where things live,
very silent, very still,
holding the winning poker-hands of possibility
while the chunks of ice and twigs
race overhead,
as fast as they can,
making it happen.
Making the thaw happen.
Making sounds to ease winter-weary hikers who
stop for sigh of spring.
Keep moving, keep rushing,
all will be well.
Better is coming, perhaps downstream.
Perhaps the next meeting,
the next speech,
the next therapy session,
the next story,
the next chat,
the next poem
will advance the plot.
But look closer.
Breathe into those
little blanks of white between the lines
that let our eyes rest
even while the greedy brain
tries to stuff it all in,
believing it comprehends all meaning.
Our microbreaths add the subtext,
the backdrop,
as Paul Harvey might say, “The Rest of the Story.”
Perhaps as we learn to notice the gaps,
so soothing,
so lush and full on their own
that there may not be another word
for a few
moments.
Whole naps,
whole meditations,
whole peaceful planets
come to live in the blank spaces.
I have loved and lost and loved again in the space of a moment.
In the SPACE of a moment,
not the prattle of a moment.
In the electricity of potential
it has happened so fast I have not even realized it,
the joyful rubber-banding
of my soul
playing in those deep true
blank spaces.
