There is a red string that
Separates
This land
From that land
I would not know the difference otherwise
This side belongs to one
Another owns the other
As if the Great Globe is not sovereign
As if the Great Spirit of the land could be possessed
Boundaries generally incite me to
Push against the seams
Especially when they’re arbitrary.
And direct lines beg for curve.
Straight has never been my resting place.
And yet.
Boundary of soft skin
Sensates satisfaction in
Rough texture of tree bark.
It is the cave of nasal receptor sites that
Welcomes the pungent aroma of tree sap
Until there is nothing but
Scent
And I
In unison.
I follow
This red string
Like a palm lingering
The trail of a lover’s finger
The boundaries
I so often push against
Guide my direction
The boundaries I push against
Guide my direction
Guide my connection
© Sabrina Santa Clara, 2021
The story behind the poem
This one has a real red string behind it. Years ago I was on a spiritual retreat on a beach in the Bahamas — an ashram, all modesty and covered shoulders — and right next door was a Club Med, where people lay out on the sand naked without a second thought. To keep the two worlds apart, someone had pushed a stick into the ground and run a red string between them: on this side, the sacred and the clothed; on that side, the bare and the sensual. I couldn’t stop looking at that string. Something in me wanted to argue with it — I’ve never much trusted arbitrary lines. But the longer I sat with it, the more I felt the other truth: a boundary isn’t only what holds things apart, it’s also the exact place where they touch. The sacred and the sensual were never really two countries. The line I wanted to erase turned out to be the seam where I could feel both at once.
Here’s what still amazes me about it: I was maybe thirty-two when I stood in front of that string. I didn’t write the poem until I was in my fifties. Some poems take years — decades — to percolate. The image goes in, and then it waits, quietly composting, until one day the words are finally ripe enough to hold what you saw. I’m sixty-one now, and I’m still a little astonished that a red stick in the Bahamas sand had to sit in me for almost twenty-five years before it knew what it wanted to say.