This past Saturday I was one of the featured authors at LitFest, a new book festival put on by Lit Book Bar. (They’re a mobile pop-up bookshop, and I love what they do! You can also find my titles there.) Even though the weather wasn’t ideal, we had a lovely crowd, and the featured authors all had a chance to give a reading or, in the case of the children’s book authors, lead an activity. I gave a poetry reading — which was so much fun to do! — and my colleague Adam Holt performed some of his original music. He also read a poem, which I wanted to feature on the blog this month.

A Poet of Space

I am a poet of space,
risen from the crippled campfire
like smoke, but not smoke, because smoke
diffuses in the shape-thieving air,
and I keep my shape:
I am a poet of space.

In the gentleness beyond fire and awake
I craft for you the skyborn new desert:
cactus is velvet,
the snake’s rattle an oboe reed—
discordant symphonics
from the elsewhere
of this place.

Squeeze now the waking from your eyes
and the desert, too.
Shutter the eyelids. Open the soul,
for manna falls to seal the one and open the other.
Watch the appaloosa rest in the ravine
from on high, from here, 
with me.

Let the mind rise
above the crippled campfire
and soul renew its peace in this place:
I am a poet of space.

***

Adam Holt writes novels, poems, and occasionally songs. He began his writing career in 2013 with the publication of The Conspiracy Game, the first in a four-part science fiction series. His poems have appeared in works from Mutabilis Press, SMU’s Pony Expressions, and the Color:Story Art Exhibition. Find him and his work @adamholtwrites on Twitter or Instagram.