One moment in a vast story followed by a reflection

3

Now be reassured

Worlds are born all the time

And can do without us

But do better with

So arise and live your life large

So it takes up the whole screen

At least for just a moment

Of this vast story

.........
This poem is based on a friend's sharing of a nightmare she had. She heard something coming up the stairs that sounded like their old dog but in the dream she remembered that their dog had passed away, so what was ascending the stairs had to be something else. What came to me was Robert Frost's "The Witch of Coos". There is a skeleton climbing the stairs from the cellar. That poem made a lasting impression on me when I read it in junior high school.

"And then someone / Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, / The way a man with one leg and a crutch, / Or a little child, comes up. / It wasn't Toffle: It wasn't anyone who could be there. . . / It was the bones."

My young imagination was perfectly capable of hearing what Frost was describing, but I was tacitly grateful that he took the trouble to put those words down. Of course a skeleton would find it hard to ascend a staircase! Same holds for old dogs.

The rest of the poem is about rebirth out of fear, but not just rebirth, but "living large", filling up the screen. We had just viewed a a documentary that was very powerful, where the director took advantage of the pregnant gaps in the dialogue to focus in on faces. So, in this poem I am picturing the face of the person the poem is about becoming the whole story. So, in my mind, the poem becomes a documentary.