March: A Poem For Adam Clayton—By PJ

Illustration based on Blue Yellow Adam, a watercolor by Kelly Eddington, 2018

March: A Poem For Adam Clayton

PJ DeGenaro

I’m not very prolific, so I’ve been using the U2 birthdays to prod myself to write poems. But there’s only so much you can write about specific people before things get repetitive. I didn’t want to write (again) about heartbeats, pulses, or funk. This is all just to say that this poem isn’t about Adam. It’s more in honor of him. And while I’m gol-darned tired of writing about disease and war, they just seem impossible to avoid.

Happy birthday, Adam, you silvery bass-man. I was angry when I wrote this, but not at you! You are the deer, in case there was any confusion.

March

Winter stalked me through the woods

Shoving and scraping, panting at my back

Through short, bitter days and endless nights.

When he caught me by the hair

He shoved me down; rubbed my face in filthy snow.

The ice and grit drove spikes of pain 

Into my teeth

And stopped my screams.

In my dream I thought I had sunk 

To the very fulcrum of the earth

And I staggered up and threw myself 

Against the rusted lever, again and again,

Till the mechanism creaked and groaned

And began its weary turn away from Winter, 

Up toward the thin, pale sun.

I awoke to a platinum sky

And a moss-green thickness in the trees.

On the ice in the ravine 

Below Jack Harrington’s Trail,

A scattering of brown birds

Had survived on nothing but song and air.

You came to me as a white deer,

Head lowered, your antlers soft and furred,

And so beautiful I could almost believe 

That the plague was over.

I could almost forget the planes

Hawking and strafing 

Another country to freezing death.