Imagination

A poem by
Jennifer Houle

Imagination

"WORLD OF LIGHT"
copyright 2006 by DEB BOOTH

It wasn't just the river frozen, or the winter
settling its unyielding nets over the land; it
was also the sky, the atmosphere circling
my bones, my skin, my organs, my senses
as the electron haze circles the nucleus
of any atom, which, if split, would
immediately destroy. The lesson:
do not split things.

Not the winter or the river or the dazzling nets of snow
but consciousness of unity, once —

was it like this? It was the candle I decided to light,
the small fire in the palm of my hand, the story of
the little match girl I refused to buy. In mine, my
wonderland, she wouldn't die. Her grandmother would
not have grown old.
The streets would not be this cold.

I'd have bought the Grecian urn version of life
and kept it in my pocket. Nothing would change,
nothing would need remedying. Dumb, but

it was how no one came. How I sat on the ocean's edge
teetering sixteen years on the brink
saying novenas and poems to the silver fish so far beneath
they appeared as glints, and I, imagining the nets I'd need
to capture them, to multiply, and up, the upward gaze
at other glints, galaxies churning and nebulae — violet,
silver, the spiral arms of galaxies never reaching
far enough to hold on tight to. Arms without hands,
eddies and vortices and the nights I could not
get up there any higher or dream down any deeper,

and the silence and the haze I inhabited, still
waiting, needing a reunion, a blue heron, a
stray tree limb to protect me from
my own desire to leap, just surge,

headlong into the throbbing middle
of anything.