The Secret Life of Beginnings
On thresholds and the courage to start
#Field Notes
There is a moment before entering any room when you are still both inside and outside. One foot across the threshold, one foot lingering behind. The air shifts. The light changes. You have not yet arrived, but you are no longer where you were.
There is often a pause there. A breath held longer than necessary. We adjust our footing. We listen. Something in us wants certainty before crossing — some assurance that the room beyond will welcome us. But beginnings rarely offer guarantees. They offer only entry.
I feel this most sharply when beginning a poem. The blank page is not empty; it is waiting. The first line feels larger than it is, charged with possibility and risk. To write it is to step into something unfinished, to commit before knowing what the poem will ask of you. There is no map yet — only motion.
Beginnings in poems hold this same tension. They are thresholds — not simply first lines, but crossings. A beginning stands at the doorway between silence and speech. It decides how we enter, how the reader follows, what kind of light waits on the other side.
A threshold does not tell the whole story. It does not explain what will happen next. It only opens the space. And yet, everything that follows must pass through it.
To begin is to step forward without knowing exactly what waits inside. It asks for a small, quiet courage — the willingness to cross.
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