& you ask me how to read an illuminated manuscript in a cataract
of sleeplessness after the animals have fallen
fast as the second door closes & a wedge of pinkish diffidence
diffuses an otherwise gloom & a main instrument – what should
I call it – birdsong in tremolo (melody is after all ever
changing & mutable) come nagging as a voice
in a depth of noiselessness asking for consideration for
a moment of question or a future patched & golden
as this autumn sunrise/ splinter of daybreak into the dispersing
mass of night (how am I doing drafting a scene you can’t
see) the darkness thrown off like worn out shirts & pants
ragged rugs & sun-shredded curtains but I swear
if I had a screwdriver slotted or Phillips either one’d
work just fine I could fix this up good (I’m decent
at repairs & restoration) I can do almost anything
with these hands take a sad case & make it pretty
likewise if I had a tinsnips I’d wrap everything up
with tie wire keep it together one way or another
though tidied or in deshabille/ either way waiting
for the not straight the wildly tattered drawn & lettered
lashing together pictures & artifacts of another aesthetic
entirely a pun of light & shadow come alive
with this dawning breeze: limbs of trees climb the sky
like pen trials on a flyleaf or as allegorical depiction/ Fortuna
for instance turning her wheel for life’s rise & fall or in a rapids
of insularity (I’m reminded of that opulence of Anglo-Saxon
gemstone pigment gilt draperies fluttering in the bestiary
of a medieval parchment painting) in this near nocturne for fellow
creatures raccoons stamp their little red-clay-smeared paws
on my nice clean black slate walk & a groundhog right
now chewing the edge off my dawn-on-the-front-porch
insomnia or in my very own bas-de-page portraits of other
extinctions & the courage it takes to suffer is this private
consolamentum: precious souls made sinecure requiring so little
work from me but giving them the dignity the sanctity
of food & shelter: a burrow a den a nest & lair
____________________
Mara Adamitz Scrupe is a poet and writer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. Her publications include five full poetry collections. She resides with her husband on their farm in the Blue Ridge Piedmont countryside of central Virginia.
This poem was chosen by Anthropocene guest editor Tom Branfoot
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