Between Connections

Between Connections

(“Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12)

It is in the connections our synapses fire,
the gaps between place and space, between
arrival and departure. And life is filled with
gaps,
filled with tears without reason,
smiles without memory,
and cause without effect.

We are lost in the distances,
circling the block hoping a new neighbor
will come into view our fourth turn
after so many mornings with the same
faces we have never spoken to.

All the energy we possess erupts, sparks
traversing
the zero between integers,
the minus between pluses,
the forever between creations

From eternity past until a new millennium.

The snow hill behind our house in North Dakota
is as close today in Spring and facing the Pacific Ocean,
as when my college daughter scooted across the ice preschool
to climb another slide down the frozen slope; our tiny white
Maltese Poodle, skipping atop the crusted snow.

The love is in the space between that memory and today’s moment.

The first girl’s smile, the Christmas with the Lionel train circling the tree,
the first view of the fair-haired maiden who chose to marry me;
each is alive, unfaded and exerting more power than the instant
they occurred,
merged in time and mixed with longing for their present tense now.

Between connections I live in the cracks where cement disguises
the solids made mostly of nothing, and thoughts seem concrete
as touch and smell.

We do well to continue, this day to the next, refusing to fear
lost connections on our journey toward perpetuity.