Poem - “Evolutionary, Our Desire for Luster”

They say humans are attracted to glitter:

evolutionary, our desire for luster –

–

an act of self-preservation, this compulsion 

for freshwater surfaces. To be human 

–

is to come up for air. And so we surface 

parting the lashless phrases of sun. 

–

What the eye takes in, encloses as ours. 

When a train the color of an origin story 

–

echoes back to me in a dream, I don’t question 

whether it is the sound ofcaught sun

–

embroidered across the small green hills.

In the beginning, heat storms ossified 

–

the bones of wintering quail. Back then,

wifi passwords were only four letters long, 

–

no special characters. We memorized

a word for when the light razored through 

–

formless loam, we grew restless in the arc 

of its narrative. The act of being was a kind of piety. 

–

We did not yet know the dazzling

templates to which we would conform.

–

“Evolutionary, Our Desire for Luster” Copyright © 2019 by Bethany (Carson) Swann. Reprinted with permission of the poet.