from Chronic

--D. A. Powell

were lifted over the valley, its steepling dustdevils

the redwinged blackbirds convened

vibrant arc their swift, their dive against the filmy, the finite air

 

the profession of absence, of being absented, a lifting skyward

then gone

the moment of flight: another resignation from the sweep of earth

 

jackrabbit, swallowtail, harlequin duck: believe in this refuge

vivid tips of oleander

white and red perimeters where no perimeter should be

 

 

 

               here is another in my long list of asides:

why have I never had a clock that actually gained time?

that apparatus, which measures out the minutes, is our own image

                         forever losing

 

and so the delicate, unfixed condition of love, the treacherous body

the unsettling state of creation and how we have damaged—

isn’t one a suitable lens through which to see another:

               filter the body, filter the mind, filter the resilient land

 

 

 

and by resilient I mean which holds

              which tolerates the inconstant lover, the pitiful treatment

the experiment, the untried & untrue, the last stab at wellness

 

choose your own adventure: drug failure or organ failure

cataclysmic climate change

or something akin to what’s killing bees—colony collapse

 

more like us than we’d allow, this wondrous swatch of rough