The Other Side Poem by Rachel Hadas

Impressionist painters capture sun
sparkling over waves as slots and bars
brimful of radiance but self-contained,
capsules of dappled light.
Having said dappled, it was time to think
exactly what such spottedness might mean.
And what it meant was two sides of a coin:
the urge to complicate,
the urge to simplify;
the wish to keep,
the wish to give away
or just get rid of;
the itch to leave,
the itch to stay
right here. Decisions:
the daily tug of war,
the seesawing, the pull, the argument,
the fidgeting partitioned into light,
light breaking up in ripples at my feet.
As if I had somehow crossed over
from one realm to another,
I stood, not moving, ankle-deep
in dapples come undone, the human knot
untied and sparkling in another sun.