Where the Map Is
by Adam Clay
No word for the snow you didn’t see pile up too quick for the eye to measure, but there’s something
to be said for the second between taking in a vision and processing it. It isn’t pure light but it’s the
next best thing, the only loving path through the mind to another type of mind, The Walkmen
covering Nilsson who’s covering Dylan. Not what Plato had imagined in his time, but there’s always
a specific way to feel homesick, a way to chart a path to loneliness without knowing its sort or its
source. I used to think a mosaic was how best to describe an urge devout in one light and profane in
another. We look inward and then chisel a way out.
Placeholder for Inaction
When I think too much
of words or look straight
through what
I’m saying (as I say it),
then the shell of my thought
might be the only source
an idea arrives from. Behind
the poet reading and through
the window, a couple ferries
their belongings out
from an apartment to their car
parked on Seventh Street, their dog
following back and forth.
Poetry might make nothing
sensible in the end
but maybe it’s that poetry
happens parallel to life
so that the repetition blurs
what happens in the moments
carved out for life. I woke up
this morning not knowing
I would write this poem for you.
