Travertine Grotto Poem by Patti Masterman

There is a high desert cliff, off somewhere inside of me
where you live, and at odd moments
I fall off of it backwards, slowly
that old eery feeling again
like being in a dream
and sliding back down some vertical slope
in an automobile, all the forward momentum gone,
wondering how the tires can keep clinging like magnets
to nothing that's real-
only wet grass and noisy gravel.

Expecting any minute that gravity will give up
and I will begin to tumble end over end,
to the bottom, crushed by the weight
of what I was foolishly attempting,
or else lose consciousness completely
of where and what I was doing, just before

Insensible that it was you again, in my thoughts
my attention somewhere indefinable, intangible;
just some phantom in space, gliding seamlessly
while searching thoroughly all the empty rooms, the echoing canyons,
like ghosts can only be found in the present,
but can only think in the past
and have to catch up with themselves in time again, somehow.

Like looking for the only spot that feels remotely like home
and always finding it was you there,
waiting for me in some awkward, airless moment,
awkward because it could never be anticipated;
suddenly a half-turn of the clocks gear,
the pendulum slows,
the spokes of the wheel stabbed into stillness,
and it swims up then, haltingly, wavering, before gradually solidifying-
miracle, dream, or mystery:

You become a secret wormhole in space, or a travertine grotto
with the tiniest of openings,
through which you are occasionally spotted
moving about arcanely,
sound-proofed by your other existence,
but still intact, to the eyes;
a rudimentary wholeness, before you turn opaque again-
all that is ever allowed-
but somehow enough food
for another night's dream.