Poetry
You are downpour,
a shock cold to bone
and breathlessness,
a wet kind of lightning.
In you, I shiver off
the muck of years.
You wash me out
from soul to skin.
One request:
Crack the sky forever
and never stop
your pour down on me.
— Adam Kamerer
For breakfast, while you slept,
I ate peaches with my fingers,
perched in my underwear
in the rocking chair on the porch.
I fished the syrupy slippery wedges
one by one straight out
from the can with my fingers,
popped them into my mouth
to dribble wet down my face,
until the inevitable moment
I sliced myself on the edge,
wet fingerprint split open
welling bright and red.
What would you say
if you stirred and saw me like this:
sticky-chinned gargoyle,
stony in the sunlight,
dripping blood into the juice,
even wounded still reaching
for another sweet fruit.
— Adam Kamerer
You wade barefoot into the creek,
your dress damp to your knees
and you turn back to see
if I would follow you.
How do I tell you
about the ghosts I see
nipping at your toes,
minnows in the water,
about the little mouths of shadows
that sail lazy among the leaves
on the surface of the stream?
The sunlight filters down
to glisten on the eddies and on you
and you splash laughter dancing,
but how do I tell you
as sweet as wading in the river
of your happiness sounds,
I can join you with my body
but not with my soul.
I am shorebound today,
unbaptised and heavied,
there are rocks in my pockets
that your laughter cannot lighten,
I cannot go into the water with you
but please keep laughing,
and splash your joy upon my face,
pour cupfuls of it over my head,
you chase the ghosts with brightness
back into their shallows,
you make the shadows shut their mouths.
— Adam Kamerer
I flutter these days
against the light of you,
saucer-eyed prophet moth,
drunk on your heat,
delirious on your illumination,
I rattle and tink
against the bulb of you,
trying to drink fire
and eat divination
through glass.
— Adam Kamerer
Let this be my new religion:
this coming-up each morning of the light,
a green sprout straining for sky,
this quiet sigh of night
pulling on her cloak of jewels,
this coming-down of rain from clouds.
— Adam Kamerer
Young brothers and sisters,
gather round, listen
to the sigh of the earth,
to the quiet breath
beneath her muddy breast,
the day is ending,
our tired mother settles down.
We clamber up into her lap,
colicky children fighting sleep,
hush young brothers
and hush young sisters,
loosen your small fingers
from the green tangles of her hair —
I know
all our bodies hurt
but suckle quiet beneath the stars,
let her lullaby lull us down,
let her blanket us with ivy and petals,
listen to the sigh of the night,
to the quiet high breath
of the wind in the night.
Even nestled in the cradle
of her gullies and greenwoods,
even nestled in her cool rivers
and her sun-warmed dunes,
you stir restless,
young brothers and sisters,
and I stir restless beside you
the night grows dark, mother is still,
we lie sleepless beneath the stars
with our thumbs in our mouths.
Yes, I know
tomorrow we will wake wounded still,
fevered on our worries in the light
but listen to the sigh of dawn,
young brothers and sisters,
to the quiet breath
of tomorrow’s crowning,
a timorous promise
in a small clear voice:
remember wild children,
even broken you are radiant.
— Adam Kamerer
In early summer last year,
we took a road trip
down some back Florida
county roads towards
a beach park where I’d drink
enough sunlight
to make my skin sick.
Somewhere in the miles
between home and the sea
we rolled past
the fenceline of a farm
littered with rust art:
tractors and tillers
transmuted into beasts
a rural fantasia
of aluminum dragons and dragonflies,
of sea serpents swimming loam,
wiregrass savanna where
a pride of John Deere lions
roar off flecks of old paint,
a black bull tackwelded together
from old cornbread skillets
scratches the ground and lowers
its horns at the road,
there a scrap tin rooster
hammered twelve feet high
struts gargantuan
held back only by barbed wire.
That evening, sunburned sick
and heat exhausted, I asked
you to drive us that way home
because I wanted to see
the junked menagerie again,
fuzzy-headed, dryparched, thirsting
I peered at the shadow and sundown
reflected in dark metal bodies,
I swear I saw them lope and slither
and flit away across the field
in wilted orange light
called maybe by their welder witch,
by whatever sower sorcerer
thought to conjure
alchemy and agriculture
together here
between home and the sea.
— Adam Kamerer