Three Poems by Margaret Adams Birth

 

ELEVEN-THIRTY P.M.

Inspired by Wislawa Szymborska’s “Four in the Morning”



For some it’s post-night time news time.

For some it’s the start of late-night comedy hours.

For some it’s night-shift lunchtime.

But for me it’s the middle of the night.



Digital clock numbers glow, mocking me with thirty minutes yet to go;

I’ve already rested at least two hours abed; and

the longer I lie still, the faster my mind spins.



The hour creeps from this point forward, slowly slipping toward

midnight in a reverse-race between fluttering eyelids and

numbers changing shape—timing how long it takes to fall asleep and

how much longer I have before I rise at five seems perverse, but that’s what I do.



Eleven-thirty at night is a time of expectation and anticipation—

whether others remain awake or I try to drift off, and

whether they move on to do more or I manage to succeed in dreaming. . . .




ORIENTATION



It’s a game I

haven’t played in a while

but, like so much from the past, suspect

my grownup experience would prove far different

from the childhood game:



Tie a blindfold on me and

take me by the shoulders and

twirl me around;



I’ll bet that when you

slide the cloth off my

closed eyes, I won’t know

which way is up and which is down,

not to mention east, west, north, south—

more than silly dizziness, it’ll

create disorientation,

a sensation

I pointedly avoid

in adulthood.



I’ll be lost on more than just

a compass; I’ll also be lost

in latitude and longitude, likewise

in where I belong between global time zones.



Did the twirling speed me

up—or only slow me

down once I stopped?

And what of the relationship (if any)

between the velocity of Earth’s spin

on its axis

and my spin, which landed me

on my . . . axis?

Then, too, what

of perception



of place,

of time,

of how

I fit into space?



I might be tempted

to ask these questions

once I’m done;

they’d reflect the concerns

of someone now mostly focused on

seriousness, who struggles to let loose

with unthinking youthful abandon;

but for now, as long as I have hope

of regaining my former sense of adventure,

I’m going to tell you:

Direct me

to the blindfold,

please.

TIME OUT OF MIND



Do you remember when . . . ?

we ask each other,

then search our

memories that we imagine are

compartmentalized like organized shelves, or file drawers

subdivided into neatly labeled manila folders.



Do you recall that time . . . ?

We mentally thumb through the

general classifications, topic by topic,

decade by decade, occasionally day by day, and

try to envision the unfilmed photos and movies

running in our brains.



Can we truly contain the time,

however much we believe we’ve

captured it in a physical picture,

though, even if we have that apparent proof?

Does the image evoke the same

feelings each person photographed had back then?



Or does each one now peer into a mirror

and envisage a completely different human

being than they once were—

more mature,

more developed than any negative

that might have once been part of their character?

Margaret Adams Birth is the author of Borderlands (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in more than 50 journals including Plainsongs, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Aldebaran, BlazeVOX, White Wall Review (Canada), Blue Lake Review, and Awakened Voices. She has published short stories and novellas (some of them written under the pen names Maggie Adams and Rhett Shepard), short nonfiction, and even a few comic books, as well. She is a native North Carolinian who has also lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, upstate New York, southern California, a rain forest on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, and now New York City. You can find her online at https://www.facebook.com/MaggieAdamsRhettShepard.