‘The first lines of Interval and Slip came to me,’ Mark writes, ‘while launching a boat on the upper Mississippi in a dense fog. The ease of the drifting boat, the stillness, seemed to convey something about the intervals we experience in life. Our days are so familiar, yet, unexpectedly at times, we slip loose from the narrative that is shaping our perspectives. These glimpses of freedom are invigorating, arresting, and ultimately mysterious.‘
Interval and Slip
We can’t explain ourselves
in the fog off the river
those mornings when all is still,
this name unknown to us,
the question of where the birds
have gone and so suddenly, trees
dimly arched in memory of the wind,
a place where you turn to ask,
has a presence descended? Is it mine?
I don’t speak, sensing that we
go along the water until the day
our little boat slips free of the current,
the oars at ease and dripping, clouds
posed in a sky we hadn’t considered,
a sky that reaches down and where
the questions become still in the asking.
It all comes in fractions until that hour,
blooming between the minutes, perhaps
a slip as you step from the porch to find
the weather warmer than expected,
there in your jacket before those streams
of traffic, so sure you’ve never seen
such a glorious haste, and never from
that singular point which finds you
breathing through your eyes
and ears, a person with no name
and to whom, until the fraction might
expire, no earthly word will occur.
Mark Christopherson
Mark Christopherson works as an attorney in Minneapolis. Although his publication credits are primarily academic, he doggedly pursues creative work when no one is looking. When not resolving conflicts for a living, Mark spends his time writing in the early mornings, biking with his artist wife, and practicing the martial arts.