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By RAHN ADAMS

Sometimes sideways / is the only sensible way / to see something / that seems tangled and topsy-turvy.

Cosmos are like that — / the gangly flower that grows / everywhere / from open fields to roadside ditches.

The name is Greek / for “ordered world” or “jewel,” / for the regular petals / and the golden, star-shaped florets.

An artist I know / painted some hot pink cosmos once, / but could do it / only by turning the painting on its side.

Order was still there / from the painter’s perspective; / but I had to stand / to one side for the world to make sense.

By RAHN ADAMS

The old man lets out his net / one float at a time / across the wide, meandering channel / making an S in the tidal grass.

In these calm estuarine waters / on the mainland side / of this despoiled barrier island, / a full-moon tide is on the rise.

But the milky tide does turn, / and the man reappears / to retrieve his gravid gill net / brimming with salty backwater bacon.

The ebb tide carries him away, / pulling him toward the inlet, / where he must leave the marsh / to cruise upriver toward home.

These are his healing waters, / but they are only half his life, / as tempests and red tides / do pock the rest of his time with strife.

By RAHN ADAMS 

The blues in her pelican painting / always smack me square in the face; / she has a knack for drawing out / what’s hiding in my head.

It was how Michelangelo sculpted David — / by chiseling away everything / that wasn’t a sexy young hunk / in that hard Carrara marble.

I miss seeing those pelican patrols / above the breakers just off the beach, / cruising low, rising, falling / in an oscillating parade of sine waves.

I said “square in the face,” / but her sea and sky are triangles / and trapezoids, diamonds and rhombi / with white space on the wing.

We all draw the same blanks / when we try to reveal the real thing / in the blues we choose / and in the ghostly grace notes we play and sing.

By RAHN ADAMS

It’s been hiding up there for years, / folded over and dusty, / atop the tall bookcase / next to the front windows.

I’ve been wondering for a while / what it was or what it is — / like Schrodinger’s pastel pussycat / boxed up for posterity.

I didn’t bother to ask the artist; / it has been a decade (or two) / since she put pencil to paper / and sketched the iconic scene.

Time flies, as wise Ben Franklin said, / foregoing the bit about fun; / another saying he coined / was to mind your business.

What the artwork was meant to be / is neither here nor there; / what it is and will become / is all that really matters.

By RAHN ADAMS

For better than seven years, / he was a tennis man / through thirteen seasons / in spring and fall.

He fairly lived at the courts / and behind the wheel / that turned on the chances / of a fortunate draw.

It wasn’t about who they played; / it was who they were / as players, as people, / whether good or bad.

“I’m just the bus driver,” / he’d always say / when they won their matches / and grabbed some glory.

But he was more than that; / he knew it in spirit / and so did they all, / getting where they needed to go.

It’s called Decoration Day, / when all the kinfolks gather / to tend the final resting places / of relatives already gone home.

That sounds kind of odd, / as if the dead had any say / in going or staying — / along the way, maybe, but not in the long run.

We who are left behind / are the ones with the choices — / not to live or die, / but to remember or forget those others.

Decorations of all kinds — / unlike dates chiseled in granite — / are ephemeral, / for even fine silk flowers finally fade.

What stands is the old fence / of locust posts and barbed wire / that turns worst memories away / so our best ones stay.

By RAHN ADAMS

Sometime around Father’s Day — / the week before or often after — / the man would appear without warning, / ready for a round of golf with his golden girl.

Whether she played or not, / they’d ride together in the electric cart — / maybe he’d even let her drive — / then she’d watch and they’d talk between strokes.

That was their tradition like none other, / though the tracks were hardly Augusta / or even Mimosa Hills back home; / they were wherever he could get a tee time.

But this last Dad’s Day visit was different; / he wanted to play a links course / with lush fairways and manicured greens, / like 18 emeralds in a bracelet on the beach.

On the final hole stood a magnolia tree / and on a lower limb was one blossom, / fragile white within tough green leaves, / like the love between a father and daughter.

By RAHN ADAMS

She was his Carolina lily, / born down South when he was nine, / a farm boy from up North / on the Susquehanna.

They met in college, / her on the fast track, / him on the six- or seven-year plan, / working his way through school.

She wanted to teach; / he planned to preach / and do a little farming on the side / when they could finally settle down.

He had turned his back / on his own father’s farm, / and so going home again to PA / was pretty much out of the question.

What they finally did / was settle on one hilly acre / gifted them by her poor daddy / in the land where Carolina lilies bloom.

Between Sunday sermons, / he cleared trees and tilled soil / on a second acre they bought, / giving them more elbow room.

But on a dark Tuesday in June, / he died and left his work undone, / cultivating one last harvest / on his way to the tomb.

His legacy was hard work / (or maybe it was hard luck), / never hoeing an easy row / when a rocky one could spell his doom.

By RAHN ADAMS

It’s one of those paintings / of someone not in it / — the art of imagining / what’s not from what’s there.

Is it the longboards leaning / against the deck railing, / leaving us to imagine / the surfer boys of summer elsewhere?

Or is it the sand fence / standing at the edge of the strand, / its slats splayed / and bleached in the wet, salty air?

Maybe it’s the pier house itself, / its windows looking down / on what’s going on in the dunes / away from our stares.

Or maybe it’s the clouds / rolling in from the west / to ruin our carefree day, / as if the weather were ever truly fair.

By RAHN ADAMS

The worst part of getting old / isn’t the brokenness / of our bodies or minds; / it’s those bonds that break one by one.

Roxanna knew she was dying, / and she wanted this — / no, not death — / a laid-back image of herself taking life easy.

Ain’t nothing easy about it, / you know, from start to finish; / it’s a struggle / to find distractions from the hardest truth.

Roxanna had seen an image / of a girl playing on the beach, / and she hoped that vision / of herself would calm our fears.

We could see her sitting there / at ease and in no pain, / and imagine her again / when our promises remained unbroken.