Matthew Word Bain

as surely as
the microwave radiation
received by the grey dish above
is traveling through space
and just as invisibly to
modern eyes
the Earth is alive
beneath this building
and is present in the block
that make up its walls

even when She is buried
beneath asphalt and concrete
and hidden from the Sky
there is no escaping Her
though attention may
wander from Her
animation
to the page
and to the screen
the human psyche itself
has arisen within Her and
can only perceive what is real
and what is right in relationship
with She who gives it life

the way this boat
moves around this alley
plays in my mind
like a stop motion film
a restless creature undeterred
by the relentless dryness
of these environs
curious to explore
this new home
its eddies, its coves
its tributaries
and able to do so
without ever
revealing its secret
its ability to move
under its own power
its possession
of agency even on
difficult
new terrain

murals remember
to us what we would like back
and soothe the losses

open every summer since 1950
a family business sustained
and eventually purchased
by its community of fans
a not for profit cinema
run by Hull’s Angels
waiting for summer
and convertible season
to light up the night again
with a two story silver screen
and until then bathe the roadside
in this strangely modern neon glow

my grandfathers were born five years after the Panic of ’93
this town’s failure to thrive still serves as a reminder
of the lasting impact such an event can have

my parents were born in the moment
between The Great Depression
and World War II

gazing at this image and doing the math
I know I am a reminder of The Great Depression
being ushered out with sugar rations and blackout curtains
and I wonder if I am a reminder of the Panic of ’93

one thing leads to another
and time is a river
and what is it about this town
to me a strange attractor from the past
still haunting the present
and is there a strange attractor
in the future that is keeping it alive
these buildings still standing even when
they seem to signify only misery
to those who live nearby

reminders of
what was at once
the right side of the tracks
and on the wrong side of history

what will remind us
of these times in between
and those times long gone before
when these old buildings become home
to the coffee shops and rooftop bars
made to cater to the hipsters
of the biotech boom?

with bright yellow beams on the horizon
like a well-structured northern sunrise
gunmetal blue greyscale on the walls
nearly continuous with the clouds
trees mingling with telephone poles
like deer grazing in a field full of cows
the characters populating this street seem
to be settling back into the life of the world
from which they once arose, and upon which
they now constitute a thin and tenuous veneer

geometry tops
Skybound and rooted in Earth
children of them both

their geometry is pure
not the built world’s abstraction

buildings made by men
chasing ideals, are only
approximations

time and weather together
return them to the concrete

neither day-glo
nor blaze orange
the color of embers
warming a cold street
even while boarded up
I wonder what was GOOD
enough to be greyed out
redacted with a can
and what was
this place
before
it closed?
for a street
that’s grey even
when the sun is out
and the flowers bloom
this is welcome color

before the troubles
things were looking up, it seemed
and perhaps they were

time takes its toll on paint
as it does on what is painted
when is a piece of plywood
no longer a piece of plywood?
a building no longer a building?
what is death to the inanimate?
what is inanimate?

death to a living thing
is not so straightforward
as an ego might sense
as cells outlive organisms
and even when those cells die
their vitality lives on in other forms
as the nutrients which sustained them
become the nutrients which sustain others
and death turns out to be something more like
a change in form or a change in allegiance
or a change in hierarchical structure
or a change in the locus of control

where lies the allegiance of the vitality
that is continuous through the transition
from life to death to life across species
if not to life itself, if not to the biosphere?
is there a difference between the two?