Isinglass

Austin Holmes

made coffee

then watched rain

in blurred sheets

cascade down the mountain

fed the dog

thin light easing

through the window

moments to be forsaken

thoughts of what is to come

increasingly shapeless

every moment as frail

and unpredictable

as a panicked bird

something looms above all of us

at once illuminating

and obscuring

the path we find ourselves on

like moonlight subdued by clouds

each night I dream of loss

and wake to recollect it

as though staring through isinglass

resinous

and fragmented

"Isinglass" is from a forthcoming manuscript titled Some Things Weren't Meant to Mend.  

The poem is about the thin barrier between waking consciousness and dream, and how, when our minds are full of worry for what is transpiring in the world, for our safety and the safety of our loved ones, and for what the future could hold, our dreams often become infiltrated by that worry.  Much like the weak early light that struggles through the window in the opening lines, the lingering dread of these dreams permeates our day.  We struggle to recollect details, but are met with shrouds.  Light, like memory, is obscured, and I imagined it filtering through isinglass, something organic and translucent but also obstructing.  Like a house of mirrors, it splinters light in the way dreams splinter our memory and worry, distorting it.