Night remains interested sculptor

 

Shawn Adrian

 

 

 

Night remains interested sculptor,

                        of us, epidermal

day-glow phantoms. Underneath

the deck, dusk-loomed

               violet bells nod,

with the hush, which I can’t

identify, flowers or weeds.

Save the silhouetted.   Walk into

openness, past captivity, and

past      the want to remain

                            consolidated.

Stiff egos might crystallize,

closed. Mine (as if I could

directly know any other—

through some sort of sympathetic

resonance) feels impressionable,

prone to                   interference.

                    Trees’ creaks turn

toward a morning of level-

shimmer, among leaf veins.

I am         the interactions, their

seeking through cadence. I

can’t remember it all, or its very

     consequences.

The fragments tease me, my

narrative—my precious devices.

                Then, what happened,

an instant’s hesitation to fractals.

I’m making it up, it being our

isomorphic moment. The subtle-

ties intone my guilty privilege,

for passing behind devastation

              that’s catastrophic—

polar melts and rainwater

toxicity.       Yet, it’s cruel,

cruel in the soft ways, and

their familiarity.

What sympathies lay with

     wishing better for my

cocooned-comfortable life?

And the largest breath would

gasp after a prolonged

asphyxiation, a near-suffocation.

That morning,

                that nature compelled.

 

 

 

 

Shawn Adrian is a poet currently residing in Selkirk, Manitoba. His two poetry chapbooks are Metis head birth & one hundred heads hydra (ZED Press, 2021), and Metanoia’s Prairie (Anstruther Press, 2022).