TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I often hear people describe “Sliding Doors” moments in their lives, a  reference to the 1998 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The movie goes back and forth between two storylines, showing the different paths her character’s life takes based on whether or not she misses her evening train. 

In a sense, any moment could be a “Sliding Doors” moment. We don’t know what the ripples might be from a simple meeting, or from deciding to run an errand after work instead of going straight home. I could take a long walk this afternoon and bump into a friend I haven’t seen in years. You could try a new coffee shop instead of going to your regular haunt and meet the eventual love of your life. I like to think of it this way: The decisions we make present opportunities every day. Who knows what could happen!

Sometimes I swear I can feel a life-changing moment as it’s happening. Some moments in life feel like walking through a doorway from one place or time into another. Like crossing a threshold. It’s often easier to see these thresholds from the other side, looking back. Retrospect is clearer than present perspective. But as I get older, I think I’m getting better at seeing significant moments as they’re happening: seeing the train doors slide open or closed. I think I’m getting better at noticing that my life is changing in real time, even if I don’t know how it will turn out. 

Today’s poem addresses these moments in life, these thresholds or gateways. What’s more, the images in this poem are so vivid, they’re cinematic. You see them, as if you’re watching a beautifully shot film.

One-Way Gate
by Jenny George

I was moving the herd from the lower pasture
to the loading pen up by the road.
It was cold and their mouths steamed like torn bread.
The gate swung on its wheel, knocking at the herd
as they pushed through. They stomped
and pocked the freezing mud with their hooves.
This was January. I faced backward into the hard year.
The herd faced forward as the herd always does,
muscling through the lit pane of winter air.

It could have been any gate, any moment when things go
one way and not the other—an act of tenderness 
or a small, cruel thing done with a pocketknife.
A child being born. Or the way we move
from sleeping to dreams, as a river flows uneasy under ice.

Of course, nothing can ever be returned to exactly.
In the pen the herd nosed the fence and I forked them hay.
A few dry snowflakes swirled the air. The truck would be there
in an hour. Hey, good girl. Go on. Get on, girl.

“One-Way Gate" by Jenny George from THE DREAM OF REASON © 2018 Jenny George. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.