As Above, So Below

after Widline Cadet, Sé Sou Ou Mwen Mété Espwa m #1
(I Put All My Hopes On You #1)

Adam Gianforcaro

When I think about the ground, I think about movement:
the countless graves we walk upon and build upon

and force life into. I could never be a gardener 
for the same reason I will never be a parent: growth 

is too confusing. That things continue to change 
despite a world of physical and mathematical constants: 

a sequoia once a seed stuck in a bear’s teeth, 
or a six-hundred-pound octopus squeezing through 

a coin-sized tube. How? Weird too that the ground 
is everywhere. We bury our dead in the dirt 

or toss them into the sea. For what it’s worth, 
ground will meet us underwater as well. Shadows 

draw upon the lowly parts as if they were the artist 
and not whichever light source was kind enough 

to share its labor. I wonder how much of art is luminosity 
and how much of it is fear. Life too: 

a patch in the astral flowerbed 
where apprehension blooms beacon-bright.

The other day, on the way to the museum, 
Jo was telling me how much she fears 

her mother’s death, the inevitable event waiting for her 
in the inevitable future. That it could walk up on her 

at any moment. I say she’s not alone in this 
but that’s not what she wanted to hear. It makes it worse 

somehow. And then I tell her there are two ways 
of looking at time: that we are fixed points 

and time moves through us, or that time is a fixed point
and we are the ones in motion. In both scenarios

the ground will still bloat its belly with overeating, 
so really, it was a pointless thing to say. Again, 

it makes things worse. When we get to the museum, I am 
most interested in the locked doors of its depository, 

the art behind them, the potential to discover 
dark rooms backlit by the brightest canvases. I want 

to mention windows here as a way to bring in more light 
but there are two in this poem already. One stares blankly

into the room like a taxidermied terrier and the other window 
barely looks like a window. It is a photo of your mother,

my mother, our collective maker. She is young and she is happy 
and there’s a ladder in the background of the picture 

that looks like it could be to a bunk bed, but it may very well reach 
the moon. It’s hard to tell: the photo frame cuts off the top 

of the image. For all we know this is another tool for transition. 
When the time comes, a way to reach sea level.