Ren Adams
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Changing Light in August

 
1.

Zero hour. Waiting yet again. 

This breathless June night.
Moonglow starts from scratches as my oval
tilting inwards
            converges with lamplight
            ten days back
            elemental, refined
glowing blue of moon-drape summer
stillness.
Moments on end
lasting a balmy forever
            each passing second
                        passing, dense, quiet.
                        The polite starlight filling in.

The side of me that you see
flung against the ceiling--
the shifting light
through curtains blowing
curving pattern of hard-movement turns
cars and lights
going somewhere else 

In darkness.
An imagined dark, a stage
a blank page
               white
Athens in April
California in July
the collision of thoughts, fast-dash choir
of presence
the collision of sound and bars. 

Come and go in the mists
of calculus and rumor. 

Three intensities of Prussian blue
            cascading, overlapping
                        cloudlets giving way
            Underfoot
                        crumbling, washing, flowing
                        with wringing-wet of unraveling rug

Sleep
                        sheetless
                        rivers of sweat in closed-in
            cockroach scratching
            silence

 Awaken. Eat. Read the mail.

These are the rituals of life.

Night excitement
the buzzing buzz-blue of a porch zap
gripping cups and cold, clustered half-shadows
June leaking away.
Streetlights leaking away.
 


2.

Slapdash trickery
of old friend-foe
the thrill of a new calendar
the movement of people and places
                                                      through time
                                        burned and obscure
             hated and chased
clustering roadside weeds, huddled. 

The creeping in,
                         creeping doubt. 

Since we were 6
running bare-foot, candybar joy
raw desert, raw lights
under Los Angeles afterglow hum
black widows under porchwood tilting 

That July of damp-refrigerator
cold-shower
broken window wood…
All things left behind.
In hallways and walks and room-corner shadows
boxes
of schoolpapers and toys, books and plans
mapped, sketched, piled, traced
in hot nights ignored
dumped
In the desert field
dumped
by the Joshua trees. 

You here, now.
In the passage of June-July
the curiosity of bathroom-tiled dorm,
the felicity of red umbrellas.
The cat who cried at the window
for her, and my sister.
You here, now.

Something in the sad
end-of-season light
remains unsaid
 

 

3.

Hallucinogen, chorale, horoscope:
each its own world, hypnotic, many-sided


Facet of the universal gem. 

            Observing
            that his lights and darks
            were a projection
                        Observing
                        that all lights and darks
                        are a projection 

I haven’t sat next to you
            on ivy-porch nights
            chattering of insects
            watching a street
                                    watching
            the flash of neighbor’s TV
            bent steel trashcan cluster
            with arms and insight
            intertwined 

The failing light
in August.
Absalom, Absalom!
 
Itinerary--
rolling, steam-hot blanket of light stars
filling cracks and streams
and corners of apartment-hole madness
falling into shadows
the wished-for
and the wished-against 

That you move through this August,
you, now.
I haven’t sat next to you
in blowing August-night,
with Albuquerque stars overhead.
 
Will there be this August?
Absalom, Absalom, Absalom.


 

--Ren Adams, 2015




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