In Two Minds

There is always a negotiation going on as if you had two minds. Take yesterday when you were writing down these lines and just at this point, you could have gone a different way. When you read this you will only be aware of one, this one, as the late morning sunshine warmed a memory until it thawed and dripped into the now. First there was the feeling, then the more clinical unfolding of fact. The jasmine just coming into flower, the cracked oriental pot you never wanted to throw away finding itself giving birth to a bulb. Then there is the ritual of trying to glue it all together with what you can retrieve from the pieces that protrude from time. In the end it's all a composite with the same old features and flaws. Each morning you link and then drag behind a lengthening chain of all that makes up you. Think of yesterday when you could have taken a different turn, entering into an alternate narrative to find your footsteps there, left in words across the page of another poem still waiting to be written.