“Lowering at Twilight” by Mara Adamitz
with the luminescence of cat’s eyes
stars tottered
& fell as little salvos as ballads of strained
lyric in voiceless fire/ an intoxication
that never met earth & scared us
but benighted
hid the whiteness engulfing us & it came four days
& nights – according to the annals – a blanket
of crystalline blanched the houses & some froze & some
starved – some always do – but by the immensity
of our powerlessness
we remained/ bidding ourselves migrants/ laborers/ minions
of cultivation – possibilities without giving
strangle possibility –
brooding still
we forced ourselves to go on serving/ imitating farmers as though
in so doing
altering the inimitable
* how we should act what we should know *
yet out I marched out beyond the cinder trail
harvesting/ separating seeds
from duff/ the heavens
from iron & plaster/ I scratched reeds for my soundboard
from throats of hot & willing men & though
I’m but skin sack/ shaky & defenseless in deep longing
aurora-tipped saplings shimmered for me
& I clasped the keyboard to my chest
pressed the bass buttons for low rhythm’s
grounding
that strain & measure of perpetuity enfolding/ slicking
up the river’s second then first floodplain
thickset with August’s wet sufferance & I prayed & played
& pestered Elysium – that promise risen in viscous shrouds swathing the treetops –
that I should never tire
of this prospect nor weary
of its anointing
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Mara Adamitz Artist Statement:
I am a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer. This group of poems explores a confluence of social, land, and environmental narratives and histories about place and our human interactions with landscapes, animals, and other life forms.
