Adam Clay

Strike Point

We begin as a song

sending some

sense into the world

and remember more

than we forget until

midway. Then

the piano looks

like nothing seen

before, a tree

growing up through

an icy lake or a bear

at the kitchen table

with the eyes of a dead

friend, the sky outside

animated perfectly

by lightning so close

your body—or what’s

left of it—

can taste the dirt

at the strike point,

as if each beginning

arrives on the back

of an ending.

The Second Longest Day of the Year

The growling from within does not come

from the dog though it might

as well. I always sigh into the air

to signal a sign of what’s past

and what’s next. Symphonic bandsaws

in unison. Some lunatic bird I align with.

Today is birth and today is anniversary.

Five years ago I swam in a lake

that could cause hypothermia.

I touched loons with the white of my eye.

Had I known that through the steam

or the stream that one life skitters off course

and into another, then what would

I have said climbing into the boat

before the messy sunset slid from the sky?

Fire lifted up from the path of the earth,

but it wasn’t a perfect reason why.