Stranger. Adam Clay

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СКАЧАТЬ afternoon? If it is

      it’s a weird one, a place unfit for a poet

      but not a place

      unfit for other people

      who calmly disregard

      everything but winter

      in a terrifying way. An idea

      along the edge of a season

      means much more. An idea

      is one born from nothing

      and destined to tunnel

      its way into a hole meant

      for a creature or for air seeking

      out a place as only air does.

      Overwhelmed? That’s only half

      of it. You can replace me

      if you like. You can look

      straight into a mirror and feel frantic all without me.

      When I say idea, I mean content.

      If you thought this was both the ending

      and beginning of things,

      you were wrong. It’s all up

      in the air, all past, future,

      and present at once. One thing is certain:

      we can’t see past

      speaking, and if we could,

      it would only be a thread.

Don’t Look Back

      It isn’t clear why one would want to see

      the source of a river, but perhaps

      stepping across the headwaters

      amounts to something memorable.

      This does not take into account

      the fact that our memories only reflect

      the moment we find ourselves in. Tomorrow

      it’s a distant sense of dread, but today

      it’s too normal for even

      the news. Each day is a fit of beginnings,

      and each day is determined to replace

      the next. Too long we’ve been silent

      on matters best left in the past,

      and I keep forgetting each

      righteous fact began as a trembling one.

Exhibit A

      Would it be enough to suggest

      the smoke from across the hill

      suggests a type of life or a type of living?

      I’d like to be stranger than I’ve been.

      One bite taken from an apple and left

      in the yard for an animal

      to scavenge. Could this be a day

      or any day? I’d like to think so.

      I’d like to think there’s something

      to be said for closeness

      to death, as if nearly leaving this world

      can color our existence in a particular way

      or another. I miss you, we might say

      to ourselves in those moments,

      but those moments lumber ahead

      without us where another person

      is making copies, sipping the last bit of coffee

      for a day going,

      a day already half-gone. I miss you,

      we might say to each other in those moments,

      as if repetition can be a way of

      or even a minor attempt at remembering.

Home as a Haunt

      Reconsidering or considering companionship seems

      too studious or perhaps

      even too stubborn

      for someone

      as careful as yourself. This pathway

      pardons care, but what you have

      when you’re all free of care

      and gardens makes

      as much sense

      as where you began.

      America’s farmlands haunt your syntax,

      your sense of being, or at least

      the filter between an object and your notion of

      what it means

      to exist as an object.

      To be ablaze inside the color blue like a fixed identity

      is to place a word

      over here and another word there beneath

      the first. This life maintains

      its level of supposing so stoically

      that you would think intention had given birth to it.

The End Time Before the End Time

      Whatever an elegy’s opposite might be,

      the river outlasted the city

      before this one,

      old СКАЧАТЬ