I woke up this morning with a line from a poem stuck in my head. I wanted to use it for the next shell (which, believe it or not, will actually be posted here sooner, I hope, rather than later), but wanted to give credit where it’s due.
I said it over and over, hoping to get some hint as to whose “voice” would have written it. I kept hearing John O’Donohue, but probably just because I’ve been visiting his words a lot these past few weeks.
My internet search turned up nothing.
Then something clicked…
I pulled a little book off my shelf — A Fragile City, Micheal O’Siahail (my pronunciation of his name is quite pitiful). I had only read one poem from this particular collection, the first. “Transit.” I had stopped with the intention of soaking up the one poem for a while and just never make it back to the actual book. But I had written one line on the cover of my Moleskine:
Here’s the full poem…very liminal, may I say?
Transit
Urgencies of language: check-in, stand-by, take-off.
Everything apace, businesslike. But I’m happy here
Gazing at all the meetings and farewells. I love
To see those strangers’ faces quickened and bare.
A lost arrival is wandering. A moment on edge,
He pans a lounge for his countersign of welcome.
A flash of greeting, sudden lightening of baggage,
As though he journeyed out only to journey home.
I watch a parting couple in their embrace and freeing.
The woman turns, a Veronica with her handkerchief
Absorbing into herself a last stain of a countenance.
She dissolves in crowds. An aura of her leaving glance
Travels through the yearning air. Tell me we live
For those faces wiped into the folds of our being.
