Transformation

Transformation

Charlene Kwiatkowski

Always Main Street where I come to order
the day. Notebook, early grey tea,
tops of trees reddening like a blush
that hasn’t yet spread.

And what of the falling leaves, the crack
in the table, the hint of cool in the air
like a light you’ve been travelling towards
for a very long time, uncertain of its promise?

This is all part of it, I’m sure Wendell Berry would say.
The change stitched into life. The risk too.
Though one can’t be forever leaping from buildings
like Yves Klein. The bigger stunt is waking each day

and loving, even if that love gets betrayed.
Save the photo ops for the artists who need to die
in order to feel. You’re braver than that
and better too—there’s no trampoline under your feet,

no trompe l’oeil staged for the press.
Your triumph won’t need to be photoshopped
into half truth. You are the real deal, Adam,
walking barefoot through feculent canyons,

screaming into the abyss, coming to
in a river full of other bent sticks.
Feel how it cuts. Feel how it cleans.

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Charlene Kwiatkowski
Poet & Mother

Charlene’s debut poetry chapbook ‘Let Us Go Then’ is coming December 2021 with the Alfred Gustav Press. Her work has appeared in Arc, CRUX, PRISM international, and elsewhere. She lives in Vancouver, BC where she works at an art gallery and occasionally blogs at textingthecity.wordpress.com

Photography Rizky Subagja