Beyond This Point
Might be someplace you’re not supposed to go, but can’t resist
a few inches encroachment. Not defiance necessarily, just to work out
why this spot exactly. Where terrain leading up to the precipice won’t
hold your weight always seems a bit further on. So calculations are likely
based on a common denominator of ineptitude. But who doesn’t feel
above average in that category, which makes it a conquest of sorts:
forbiddance transgressed.
Elsewhere you may be allowed to proceed but must or must not bring
something with, e.g. helmet or booze respectively. More rigorously enforced
so noncompliance can be awkward, especially if you needed authorized
entry in the first place. Spatially most stringent, keeping lots of people out
while letting certain others in extends points to lines of exclusion, although
liberty suffers all around, bearing in mind that “include” and “enclose”
share the same Latin root.
How about temporal points, in numbers unfathomable, where things
like mountain ranges, ducklings, wood pencils and their erasers change,
with every now and then a point of significance, like bedrock after eons
all at once exposed to sunlight, or wings attaining strength required, or
accepting your inability to find a solution. Finally, the point with no
beyond and its logical conclusion: If nothing is the other side, then you
never will get past it.
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William Goulet resides in Cornwall, Connecticut. His work has appeared in the Tipton Poetry Journal. His play, filler, was produced at the Paradise Factory, 64 East 4th Street, New York City.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 