By CAConrad
we stopped
studying the
night sky for
directions
if someone said
we made it up
planet Earth
isn’t real
we would try
to verify try
to be sure
critics
are the
evidence
we do not
trust ourselves
your imagination is
asking for parole
what is your
verdict Warden
try to always
remember the
calendar made
of light our
ancestors
followed to
pass the year
This is a poem about what the skeptic loses — imagination, along with a necessary connection to ancient practices. How are we to believe in Earth if we can’t believe in the Heavens? In the plodding directionlessness of the present, we are lost without the astral maps. I want to point out too CAConrad’s signature care for the visual impact of the poem. The disciplined shaping means that the poetic line here not only carries sound and sentiment but builds toward a striking sculptural presence. CAConrad’s is poetry that reaches for multidimensionality, and in this poem, the arc and increment of indentation is a convincer, moving with and toward the poem’s conclusion. (This poem first appeared in Copenhagen Magazine.)