Urban Butterfly
What business have you here,
In acrid air, to strain
Through jagged glass and steel
On a cracked asphalt plain.
Faint, shady memory
Of vernal vales of green –
Wind-tossed, long-lost, you fly
Among this tortured scene,
Whose weight could pulverize
Your grace with heartless ease;
And yet you flutter, blithe
And nonchalant – to tease?
The Seashell
An errant shape appears upon the sand,
Borne from ultramarine depths to wash
Among the turquoise waves’ relentless crash
Upon another world, a sun-drenched land.
So small it is, yet so ornately planned:
A volute swirling to a spire, awash
With vibrant hues and iridescent flash.
What slimy mollusk’s home should be so grand?
The sea is deep and dark, and stretches wide;
Beneath its waves, it cloaks its treasures well.
I, small and land-bound, cannot breach its keep.
Yet this appears to me upon the tide,
An angel from that other world to tell
A small part of the wonders of the deep.
Vision
(Sun Shower)
The storm air comes alive, electrified
As noonday sunbeams slice through the torrents, divide,
Infinitely pared and multiplied.
They turn the world into one sparkling mass
Of dancing light, a gossamer forest of glass
Dazzling with a gleam no eye can pass.
The endless, radiant, all-consuming light,
Refracted, mirrored, glinting, and shimmering might
Seem unreal, a supernatural sight.
Indeed it is a glimpse, if brief and faint,
Of what no words, no brush, no mind’s eye can paint:
True Light that transcends all earthly taint.
Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana, where he practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. His poems have appeared in Indiana Voice Journal and Tulip Tree Review. He has also had short stories and works of legal scholarship published in various journals. He also composes music, which may be heard on his YouTube channel.
Adam, thank you for these lovely poems. My favorite is ‘The Seashell’, and the line ‘What slimy mollusk’s home should be so grand?’