Lowering at Twilight by Mara Adamitz

 

“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.

Author: A Room of Her Own

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