Thrush Poetry Journal
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Adam Clay
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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.





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