In the Spaces Between
The pause between inhale and exhale,
the place where an electric spark jumps,
the leap of the brain over missing words in a text:
in Japan it’s called Ma: a hiatus in time
or a distance in space
like the rests between musical notes,
or the interstices where lichen grow.
What energy funnels the wind between ridges,
inhabits the span between branches of trees?
In the lapses between ocean breakers
akin to the lulls between surges of pain,
I find my mission: to bridge the divide
with singular moments. Hearing them echo like chimes,
even while girding for grief; noting the pockets of light
that gleam between now and the dark.
Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two scholarly biographies, two memoirs, a full collection of poems, and four poetry chapbooks. Her last chapbook, THIS SAD AND TENDER TIME, appeared (Kelsay Books) in December 2023; PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2025.
Not, I’ll not allow you, harpy, to swoop in again
And snatch me up with talons razor sharp; no, I demur.
That scarlet snarl that mars your woman’s face, that slur,
That smear, that smut: I must, I will, escape its bane—
But how? How not picture vulture’s legs beneath your bulk
And spewing beak? How to re-vision you whose gifts
Became my own, plagued as I am by memories of your shifts
From warmth to raving, ravage, wreckage, sneer and snipe and sulk?
My task: to find the mother in that predatory bird
Who clawed and raked my tender parts, with no excuse
Except an emptiness so rageful that it blunted, blurred,
Belied all but the urge to injure, abjured kinship for abuse.
What other hope but to enjoin the power of the word
To light the way to what remains of poise, of peace, of truce?
Mother Harpy
After Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Carrion Comfort”