What Dark shattered –
(Razor shards scattered) –
That cut the threads that held me so?
What Dark separates
Planets, stars, and arbitrates
Between heaven and those below?
Dark is more than empty space
That lies between a stranger’s face
and me as I come and go.
Without my threads, stays fall,
Shutters flap. I see through all
These empty places –
Dark clouds hang. Within
Each mist there’s something written
In common script with lines and spaces.
If I get there through this night,
With even a small and borrowed light,
Past the scriveners with no faces,
Through the echoes from lost places,
Can I find the ancient script –
Its cipher from my memory ripped
A hundred years ago?
Paulette Callen has returned to her home state of South Dakota in retirement, after 30+ years in New York City. Varying degrees of culture shock in both directions — but always, the space she returned to has been made home by a dog.