Come / home. Everything is begging you.
— Ada Limón
We come upon it rounding the edge
of Brook Hollow — the sign that marks
the verge along the path.
Storm-weathered, standing at angle,
worn fence post beside it, barbed wire
and bramble interlaced at its base.
And just beyond, through a scrim
of bittersweet, wind-blown pasture —
orderly lines and rows of new-mown grass.
Everything is happening here —
a respiration, an adaptation, a kind
of survival. Edge habitat, the sign
tells me, is a transition zone
between two adjacent habitats —
but where is the edge I’ve been
walking, the place of transition?
Where is the fence of the body,
the wall of the breath?
***
edge, noun.
The thin sharpened side of the blade
of a cutting instrument or weapon;
opposed to the ‘back’ or blunt side
edge, verb.
To harrow.
***
When my son was born, he almost
wasn’t born. He was blue as another
planet — no heartbeat, no breath.
So I breathed for him as we watched
from the edge of the room — I sang beneath
my breath as they rubbed him down,
as their hands, so many, impressed
on his heart to keep beating, wanting him
here to that rhythm, wherever here is —
I sang, praying hard to this world
to hold him close, and though I like to think
my song was what brought him through,
it was their care, their genius
that carried him back from the brink —
it was others who bore him, this world
in the form of their hands,
when the boundary line of my
body wouldn’t release him.
***
on edge
anxious, nervous
***
As a child I was terrified of edges —
of needle-points, blades in the eye.
I imagined that wounding as hard
as I possibly could, saw the prick
and pop of membrane, the stream
of ichor. I thought if I could see
it hard enough — see it through
in my mind to its logical conclusion —
I wouldn’t actually see it
through with my own two hands.
It worked — I still have my eyes,
but my mind has its blindness:
it forgets how to see
there’s a place between fear
and wonder.
***
edge, noun.
incisive or penetrating quality
***
And maybe none of this
is new so much as all of this
is always already new —
maybe no edges exist
when all the world is an edge,
when there is nothing
we can make of all this
except making it, nothing
we can see except what is
here. The hardest thing of all
to see is what is really there —
J.A. Baker with his peregrines,
like the one I’ve seen pricking
the power lines over the street
and now spiraling over the field
with the knife of its beak.
A knife, an edge, a scalpel
that opened me up — opened me
just enough to pull him through
into living and dying and living
and dying to live, into being here,
being an edge on this edge
of all things—into feeling his
being, insistent as a blade.
***
on edge
adjoining, close by
***
Edge habitats are more diverse
than adjacent habitats — this too
on the sign by the path
where I’ve been standing, all
nerve and hormone, all flight
and intrusive thought. Showing
already — my second child’s heart
throbbing low in my belly. The orbs
of his eyes fully formed, the lungs
near finished — Will he breathe?
I have to worry. Will he live?
Consulting the sign again,
I read that species requiring both
open and forested areas utilize
edge habitat. Which will he be,
I wonder — forest or field, or something
of both? No knowing, no telling,
but always this constant carrying —
always already here inside me,
already at home. The hardest thing
to see is what’s really here.
***
edge, variant of age, noun.
The length of time (sometimes given
as a specified number of years)
that a living thing, as a person, animal,
plant, etc., has lived.
edge, noun.
a favorable margin
***
So here he is, and here I am,
and here we are, and I’ve been
trying so hard to be at home
in this world that I’ve forgotten
I’m already here at home
in this world — and maybe this
can be a kind of home, a kind
of habitat, a breath flooding in
and out of a body littoral, for
if depression is stagnation, what
isn’t this world? Who aren’t we
but our own transitions, our mean
evolutions? Fear and wonder
and somewhere between — the hardest
to see. Everywhere and nowhere
but mostly everywhere — these forests
and fields overlapping, these creek beds
of care. We are here for now
watching the peregrine riding
the thermals — until my son kicks
and I’m walking the path toward
home, my two eyes widening slowly
with fear and wonder, an animal
who has never been more human.
*Definitions of “edge” and related phrases were lifted from Merriam Webster Dictionary and OED online.
*“if depression is stagnation” is a modified line from Sandra Cisneros’ essay “The Beautiful Unforeseen” — “What is depression if not stagnation?” — published in Orion, Autumn 2022.
Click here to read Elizabeth Moore on the origin of the poem.
Image by josh ludahl on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
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Wonderful weaving together of stodgy definitions and ambiguities with realities, memories and affections