Then
The afternoon was a medium.
You made it to the beach. You made to it
an invertebrate overture. Lay down slug
-like, slit belly, what gave.
You were entering what then was called
the universal. A bit
pendulous. You felt a motion that wasn’t
negative pulling you toward the ancient texts
you had discovered floating in some sewage.
They were from the heyday of psychology.
You laughed at this. An animal filament
flickered at the edge of sea. By sea
they had meant mind. You laughed at this.
You observed frothing something. Universal. Stung
your toes. Something universal at the edge you nip
your toes in. Something universal this way you become.
Copyright © 2020 by Aditi Machado. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 14, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote it on the twenty-eighth of December (or perhaps it was November) of 2019. The title ‘Then’ refers to a time before ‘Now,’ a time of isolation for the last human left on earth. There were meant to be several ‘Then’ poems and several ‘Now,’ but the writing of them has temporarily, as of May 2020, ceased. What I knew then I don’t now know—or is it the other way around?”
—Aditi Machado
Aditi Machado
