PARTICLES to WAVES

Some nights, I sit for hours watching the backyard fence, what golden light it holds still for a moment as, on the other side, cars rush by. The fence posts seem to catch and release each car, like sheet by sheet of animation drawings. Headlights gush open each framed space and proceed up the street, bursting through the barriers; making fireworks. On a rainy night, tires on the asphalt press and swish. I hear water waves, a beach.

The backyard where I’m living for now is large, but empty of trees, and the street beyond the fence is a busy suburban city street. There is no real ocean. Sometimes, though, above the fence, there are real fireworks. A streetlight guards high over the yard; I call it my moon. I’ve planted sunflowers, lit candles, burned incense. I’ve tried to embrace this odd place.

The yard is surprisingly private, even serene. Although my senses are sparked ‒ occasionally tested when a motorcycle rages, when a concrete truck rattles ‒ I rest out here. I sit at my picnic table and watch all the lights. I think under my moon; when it rains, I listen to an ocean.

In the early evening, before the sun sets beyond the street, in an instant, I can see both an entire car sliced up with fenceposts and only one split slice of it. A dual perspective. I asked for privacy in my temporary yard, that’s it, but have nonetheless received more than this.  

Today I read a poem I’m going to frame and hang by the backyard door. It may not be as relevant wherever I take it to live next. But, like the fence, the poem will show me how to see better, to look through obstacle, to be a path, no matter where I am. It will remind me of the yard I dealt with, made the best of, and where I learned to better find lightness.

Another beauty from Jane Hirshfield:

THE SUPPLE DEER

The quiet opening

between fence strands

perhaps eighteen inches.

Antlers to hind hooves,

four feet off the ground,

the deer poured through.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don’t know how a stag turns

into a stream, an arc of water.

I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer:

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.