A persistent ticking,
the rising sun, that pinched face,
devours a liquid blue sky
in rings of dry light.
With the hard keep of bad karma,
locked fists of prediction
chase orbiting planets,
passive moons roll on the horizon,
metallic stars plummet in milky galaxies.
Below that wide window,
between thirst and plenty,
where absolution and promise molder,
a thin blade may whisper in the red depth
of blood and tendon,
a footstep may fall beyond safety’s ledge,
a bullet may seek its mark.
Not all tragedies can be contained.
Still, an audience rises to applaud
its newest candidate,
a planet of faithful faces
propels the wheels of ambition,
as if the status quo could never be displaced,
as if failure and famine loom only on foreign shores,
all the while tottering close to that fervid edge,
near danger always,
always lisping
a fevered litany:
“All is well,
all is well.”

Cicadas roil their green machines
in twilight, even in the dark
when the summer moon rises.

“Heat overpasses us,
and water is only water,”
they hum.

Those winged rowers steam into
the wet night, keep the treetop presses rolling through dawn.

Two thick glass discs,
one convex,
one smooth as a placid lake,
and the grit slurry
between them,
grinding the second, concave.

Repeat the same curve,
the end, the beginning.
The more perfect the orbit
of the grind,
the purer the view—

the moon, a translucent coin,
ringed Saturn,
Jupiter with its staring red eye,
nebulas in gold and crimson vapor,
a shooting star’s arcing blink
into anti-gravity.

Remind yourself of latitude,
refraction, all the abstract
definitions for direction
that we hold.
In them is our defense
from chaos,
our measure,
the way we breathe.

© 2006 Carolyn Adams

It is
storm, snow,
childbirth,
thirst.

It is the worry
of a moonless night
when blackness
swallows the sky.

It is the leaning
of a shoulder
upon a shoulder.

It is a hunger
kept,
knowing
the void
of memory.