Driving up the hill
through the village
a ten second drama
plays out to my right
– a baby boy
comfortable in the crook
of his grandmother’s arm
receives a hurried kiss
from his mother
as she turns to walk down
the hill to the bus stop
the baby stretches out his arm
towards his departing mother
once more going to work
more bewildered than upset
but his grandmother
steps back indoors
before possible tears
leaving the pavement empty…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at the dVerse Poets Pub, dorahak is hosting Poetics and invites us to write about Liminal spaces using one of the following senses of the phrase.
In general, a liminal space can be looked at in three ways:
1) as an empty structural space (an overgrown, ruined fairground, shuttered department store once familiar like K-Marts here in the U.S., an abandoned shopping center or mall, a silent nighttime hotel corridor); OR
2) as a place of transit (a hotel lobby, an airport terminal, or a parking garage, gas/petrol station or a city street at night); OR
3) a passage in a more abstract sense, e.g., New Year’s Eve, a decade’s close, a birthday, anniversary, or holi(holy)day.