Poetry in Lit Up

Locked Up

a poem

Photo by on

He wasn’t made to fill the air with noise,
don’t ask him to. His music is calamitous,
his ideas flap and gloat to the floor as
minced debris at the gate of his mouth.
— even so, even so, defiance. He too

understands the liquid clouds and the salmon
(as though in concomitance with himself
the sky and breaking leap were brought
to sacred oneness in a breath’s respite).
Hold it in and seeing pink pillared Saturns

delay across the day as they’d once
painted the river’s glass before evening’s
close, once, and maybe now, again shudder,
ripple, make space for what
has been withheld from us for all of this,

the fecundity of the hidden yes, the
tantamount to a miracle — yes, he too.