The Owls Continue: Nicholas Adamski

April 29, 2020, Kate Belew With Nicholas Adamski (Catskills, New York)

I know what it's like to get wheels stuck in the mud

And my blood is awash with generations of earth

How many times will we have this talk, you and I?

I know, I know let’s talk about something real for a change. 

Like not wanting to do anything. Or a barn owl. 

We swim through a night pool by a fishing hut, marco, polo, 

marco, and in the trees, beyond the edge of the lake, the owls 

continue the calling all night, and we wonder who we are too

and if childhood ever really ends. 

When we gather the juniper and our flashlights and our rain boots

and run to the edge of reason and beyond it, into a 

thicket, I find a new love for briar, for nettle, for the legs

that brought me here and the imagination that

we can survive the longest waking toward one cliff or it's brother,

knowing always that our death exists

somewhere in the unknowable future and is certain, steadfast, muck of malice, steadfast quicksand of silence, sink with me sister into the deep perfect end 

of whatever we want to call personhood or otherwise maybe then we can find ourselves back on the grass with our hands in a stream and the 

pine speaking in sweetness, thank you, I'm so glad you're here, sit with me a while.