Written piece
Dawn chorus
Mikaela Nyman
New Zealand
About this piece
The world is spinning out of control, despite our attempts to hold on. This is a poem to remind ourselves how easily things become frazzled, unless we take time to breathe, reflect, and connect with fellow humans and nature. And remind ourselves that we exist here and now.
Dawn chorus
At dawn, when eye meets I
in an honest encounter over
threadbare facts spun like cotton
candy over age, sex appeal, hairy nostrils,
a captive image bulging in convex glass
with nowhere to go, thread kindness
through this power suit of meanness,
shear the dark stubble off those cheeks.
Raise the tools of your trade –
the fool, the phone, a naked eye that longs for
open sky untainted by linked stars, shooting
missiles, an ocean so
blue.
Forever on repeat, fumbling a path through
a darkening world, looking for linked sky, shooting
stars, missives from Ocean Vuong – knowing that
this earth is singing, singing to remind us. Here,
now.