Between

The space between moments
is a dangerous place to find yourself.

For a fraction of a second
you might have traveled in time
or between dimensions:
you take half a breath in the dusty womb
of your childhood house or in
the quivering depths of a city you
don't yet recognize;

you glimpse misty rain falling golden,
slipping viridian off mushrooms
ringed with iridescent blue,
and feel the last booming tremor
of a cloud whale's song

before you're back again, dizzy,
worrying where the next click
on the clock's second-hand might bring you.

Someday, you're afraid,
you'll slip away
and never find your way home,
Rip Van Winkle asleep indefinitely,
Tam Lin minus your Janet,
Persephone with twelve seeds
rattling in your empty stomach.

It's with the weary knowledge
of an old shanachie that you tell me,
The space between moments— 
I think it's where fairies live.

And I—the minutes held linear
and evenly spaced across my hands,
a daylong time traveler going just one way—
wonder what on earth, or under
heaven's reach, you're trying to say.