Adam Burrell

POETRY

Let it Be So

Do you come to me? Do you come to this trash heap playground?
You tread on the mud, kick past the dirty magazines and sit,
silent and unassuming, on that swing. I’m still hiding inside
this rusted, metal climbing dome next to the merry-go-round.
You shouldn’t be here, plain and simple. It’s a place for snotty kids
and maybe drug dealers after dark. It’s a place for teenage makeout sessions,
for raccoons and garbage cans and broken bottles and old shoes — and me.
I’ve got my mile after chalky mile of hopscotch proofs to show
what can go together and what cannot — what must never be so.
But the words swing like a breeze across the sandbox to me
Let it be so now. Because you are a beloved son — right where you are.

Look at the Birds

I’ve been catching bluebirds out of the corner
of my eye — flitting from branch to branch,
eyeing me with curiosity or perhaps mockery.
My neighbor put up a flower box on his fence
where a tree used to be. It was taken out
four years ago, he explained, though its digital ghost
remains on Google Maps. I was taking in the bird’s eye
view from my office the other day, which lately
has become a kind of monastic cell where I practice
ora et labora daily — pray and work. Cells die daily,
I’m told, and, without me lifting a finger, are regenerated
inside of my praying body. And so I hear that old
question of his resurface — as it does in the eyes of horses
or my husky What, in God’s name — literally
in God’s name — should I be worrying about?
If I’m hearing that bluebird, and that tree’s sacred ghost
aright — nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing at all.

Adam Burrell is a working poet living in the Sacramento region of California. He is the author of CALL and Other Poems. His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Strong Verse. Adam holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and is passionate about the nexus between spirit, word, and body that finds expression in poetry.

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Image: Balancín Antiguo by George Hodan, Public domain.