Chronic by D. A. Powell

Chronic

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

why do I need to say the toads and moor and clouds—

in a spring of misunderstanding, I took the cricket’s sound

and delight I took in the sex of every season, the tumble on moss

the loud company of musicians, the shy young bookseller

anonymous voices that beckoned to ramble

             to be picked from the crepuscule at the forest’s edge

until the nocturnal animals crept forth

             their eyes like the lamps in store windows

                          forgotten, vaguely firing a desire for home

hence, the body’s burden, its resolute campaign:  trudge on

and if the war does not shake us from our quietude, nothing will

I carry the same baffled heart I have always carried

             a bit more battered than before, a bit less joy

for I see the difficult charge of living in this declining sphere

by the open air, I swore out my list of pleasures:

sprig of lilac, scent of pine

the sparrows bathing in the drainage ditch, their song

the lusty thoughts in spring as the yellow violets bloom

              and the cherry forms its first full buds

the tonic cords along the legs and arms of youth

              and youth passing into maturity, ripening its flesh

growing softer, less unattainable, ruddy and spotted plum

daily, I mistake—there was a medication I forgot to take

there was a man who gave himself, decently, to me & I refused him

in a protracted stillness, I saw that heron I didn’t wish to disturb

was clearly a white sack caught in the redbud’s limbs

I did not comprehend desire as a deadly force until—

              daylight, don’t leave me now, I haven’t done with you—

                            nor that, in this late hour, we still cannot make peace

if I, inconsequential being that I am, forsake all others

how many others correspondingly forsake this world

               light, light: do not go

I sing you this song and I will sing another as well