October: The Where

By Cliff Lake

 

October: The Where

 

Dusk.

The in-between time.

Mists hide in the tree line,

Insubstantial and too real,

Making the minutes elastic.

What calls to you now from the roughly familiar?

What comes near?

Disquieted steps taken,

Into the familiar unknown.

The paths you know lead to places they have never gone before -

Too near to the damp places that do not dry.

A déjà vu here.

A memory cobwebbed.

Misted and near only now.

And only then.

A dream forgotten and lived once,

But vaguely,

Vaguely.

Then.

You almost didn't get back.

Then.

The thought of it smells like yesterday’s campfire:

Acrid and wet.

Only then.

You almost didn’t get back, did you?

 

Did you?

 

Boulders you knew now squat unfamiliar,

Shrubs raking with barbed tendril,

Blood not offered in twilight,

And taken anyway.

Fallen branches squirm in the half-light,

Are they moved by the mist?

Do they reach unknowing?

Does the haze return their sentience,

A jealousy of the ambulatory?

All meanings indistinct as the dark deepens.

This is the in-between time.

This is where nowhere happens.

This is how nowhere happens.

When you were here before.

When you almost didn’t get back.

Dusk,

And the paths you know take you places they have never gone before.

 

You stumble to a roadway,

Miles from home.

And the damp clings like memory.

 

Cliff Lake 10/4/2022

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2022

 

Location: Dalton, MA, USA

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