Poetry Is Seeing Clearly

Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash

 

First the edges glow and turn black

then it curls in on itself, shrinking,

flames rising, going up in smoke

until all that remains is ash that drifts

 

lands at my feet miles from where it

once rustled in the wind and before that

had to unfurl from the bud of a bare

branch made so by cold and low light.

 

“To see clearly is poetry,” said John Ruskin

who made the leaf into art and saw his role

as “truth to nature” and in seeing clearly,

saw the coming storm, weather patterns

 

thrown off kilter by the fires of industrialization

stoked by capitalism turning all utilitarian

while art unfolded for its own sake leaving

so many souls to wither in the cold.

At the edge or the end we stand in the dust

of what was as time curls in on itself

will poetry unfurl from this moment or

will the smoke obscure our view?

 

In the dark the edges glow and turn black.

Flames rise as the past is consumed.

For a moment there is light then ashes

to ashes to feed the soil, society, soul.

 

©2020 Joanne Young Elliott