Perched Between
When I first turned into the residential neighborhood of smaller, older homes, I began to wonder if maybe I would be spending the week in a room wall to wall with beds. And then I turned up a street that said "No Outlet" and slowly drove up the block, checking the house numbers: 438 and I was looking for 700. In a block with a dead end.
But what a dead end!
Two stone pillars on either side of a gate with a path stretching up and up and up, through gardens and wonders and... peace.
And up two flights of stairs and down a long, long hallway to my room, where I throw open the curtains and find that I am perched just perfectly balanced between the world I left behind me and what lies before me: the world of misty covered mountains and open meadows.
I half suspect that if I could manage to open the window without damaging the screen
I could find myself in that other world
Where lungs fill with an air more pure than any other
Where feet walk more surely on craggy peaks
Where eyes see more easily a mystery more complete.
But instead I am perched between.
At night I wander,
All of Los Angeles --
Before me like honey
Spilling, glistening
over a spoon
with the trembling viscosity
of something not easily swallowed.
And I, tucked in against the mountain, remember in the clinging pull of the city
I should be perched between.
But what a dead end!
Two stone pillars on either side of a gate with a path stretching up and up and up, through gardens and wonders and... peace.
And up two flights of stairs and down a long, long hallway to my room, where I throw open the curtains and find that I am perched just perfectly balanced between the world I left behind me and what lies before me: the world of misty covered mountains and open meadows.
I half suspect that if I could manage to open the window without damaging the screen
I could find myself in that other world
Where lungs fill with an air more pure than any other
Where feet walk more surely on craggy peaks
Where eyes see more easily a mystery more complete.
But instead I am perched between.
At night I wander,
All of Los Angeles --
Before me like honey
Spilling, glistening
over a spoon
with the trembling viscosity
of something not easily swallowed.
And I, tucked in against the mountain, remember in the clinging pull of the city
I should be perched between.
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