A WORD THAT MEANS STANDING BETWEEN EACH MOMENT
I dreamed I was speaking every language,
no one a stranger, and then I woke to find
the same few words I assemble my life around.
Overnight a dusting of snow has settled into leaves,
into crooks of oaks in the side yard. It takes years
sometimes to know what sifts down into my thoughts.
Having lived this long has granted me few answers.
I’ve been given only new questions and less
confidence in anything but my own inadequacy.
If only it were possible to pause between each
moment and weigh the implications of what
came before against what is now coming to be.
I laugh to think of how I once labored to memorize
a poem, to embody its words and carry them forth
into the world. Now I remember only one word: float.
About the Author: Jeff Hardin is the author of six collections of poetry: Fall Sanctuary (Nicholas Roerich Prize); Notes for a Praise Book (Jacar Press Book Award); Restoring the Narrative (Donald Justice Prize); Small Revolution; No Other Kind of World (X. J. Kennedy Prize), and A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being. The New Republic, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Southwest Review, North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry Northwest, Hotel Amerika, and Southern Poetry Review have published his poems. He teaches at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, TN.
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Image Credit: Unknown Maker “Niagara” 1860s – 1880s Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
As It Ought To Be 