In between our rotten moods we find the subtle stuff,
I’d call it energetic work if that didn’t sound too fluffy,
But once you’ve signed on there is no going back, to before
When your breath did not always heave with the room but
Rather was just your breath, something you could do with
As you pleased. People are forever in between
Projects or relationships or states of mind,
But what we can’t quite figure out is how to pick
One or the other: the mood or the space just before the next mood.
It is the same distinction that exists between the self-conscious performance
And the so-called genuine article, meaning, whenever
We are unsure of what side of the Here-I-Am spectrum we’re on then
We fall into this space I’m talking about. “I just don’t know
Where to go with my work,” my friend says, “I’m between
Styles.” My whole life I’ve hunted like a rat in a maze for
The way out of the in-between, but the lines blur
Like twilight on the horizon and now it is true that I cannot be
Bothered with such pursuits because there is something here for me
After all, a kind of suspended tension that reminds me
Strongly of what Goethe was writing about when he spoke of the good old
Eternal feminine—not that we even need such grand ideas,
Really, we don’t because we all know the chaos and confusion
Of looking at an abstract painting, something scraped and splattered
And hanging on the wall in front of your eyes at the gallery,
Imbuing you with that singular sensation of the not-quite-formed
And maybe that’s the whole idea, evolution and progress notwithstanding,
Namely, to feel that reiki-like energy that gathers between flesh,
To hover therein and feel settled nonetheless,
So that all my shifting moods are me and I am nothing more
Than my shifting moods, and the invisible electricity
That flows between the fingers of God and Adam in Michelangelo’s
Masterpiece can course through me freely, making my moods,
And the spaces between them, if not always lovely, bearable.
