heteroglossia:

"It occurred to me / that one night I’d / cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff / into the terrible water & walk forever / under it out toward the island." — John Berryman

In the quiet that precedes
small remnants of sound
headlights mark
shadows in fog-stream:
a few cars on the highway.

The driver turns, unthinking onto
back road, soon she finds that infinite-
simal break
where pavement meets forest,
half littered path & heavy undergrowth
in throes of spring’s first hours,
minutes, walks

toward the spot where sun
might be,
rising
if it were, sheds
her coat her bag her sweater:
not needed. She will walk this path,

& then walk longer. Knowing
since youth, that one night she too
would last cross

the damp-oak grounds
clothless, soundless
toward crack of light, 
that great edge
be it water or sky, where there is
no I, nor word for I.

— Jacqueline Winter Thomas, “Coming Home”