Boundaries by Linda Pastan
This one was shared by a friend.
Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
Boundaries
By Linda Pastan
In Monet’s Water Lilies,
willows dissolve into
flowers dissolve into water,
and form becomes a dream
in purples and blues
without scent or story.
Consider the death of boundaries,
the way sight dissolves
the moment just before sleep
overtakes us. The way
a man can disappear
inside a woman. I remember
a day of ruffling waters
when we sailed west
in your creaky boat.
We steered for the horizon—
that penciled-in line between
ocean and sky, then watched
as it receded ahead of us.
The night my mother died
there were cells in her body
that didn’t notice. For a while
the moons of her nails kept rising,
the hair kept growing from the apex
of her widow’s peak.
Now by a barbed-wire fence
that divides two countries,
the invisible roots of an old tree
spread their living network
underground, in all directions.
