Adam Clay
Blessedness is Ours
—after Mahmoud Darwish
Up from bed and into news of last night’s chaos arriving through the loop of rootless
trees, I find a thread of promise in the words that allow less helplessness: almond trees
have illuminated the footprints of passerby. Four egrets align in the mind. This vision
burns so clear it cannot be a memory on the border of a siege. What does it mean to drift
free of thought or within one? In consequence of currents, sensory tells us less of the
magnitude and more of the risk of water without land to mirror the sky’s shallow ridge.
When thoughts arrive pristine, they are both swift and certain. On second thought, they
are more like what a silo holds: layers of history and danger in the way of resistance
toward a simple way of describing light as a bruise. No need. The day lifts up and out like
a spruce.
Adam Clay's most recent collection is TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE SEA (Milkweed Editions, 2020). He edits Mississippi Review and directs The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
Return to January 2022 Edition
—after Mahmoud Darwish
Up from bed and into news of last night’s chaos arriving through the loop of rootless
trees, I find a thread of promise in the words that allow less helplessness: almond trees
have illuminated the footprints of passerby. Four egrets align in the mind. This vision
burns so clear it cannot be a memory on the border of a siege. What does it mean to drift
free of thought or within one? In consequence of currents, sensory tells us less of the
magnitude and more of the risk of water without land to mirror the sky’s shallow ridge.
When thoughts arrive pristine, they are both swift and certain. On second thought, they
are more like what a silo holds: layers of history and danger in the way of resistance
toward a simple way of describing light as a bruise. No need. The day lifts up and out like
a spruce.
Adam Clay's most recent collection is TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE SEA (Milkweed Editions, 2020). He edits Mississippi Review and directs The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
Return to January 2022 Edition