You’re Meant to Suffer / You’re Meant to Adapt, by Devon Balwit

You’re Meant to Suffer / You’re Meant to Adapt
 
Think big, think megalith, think slow.
Think fifty years in the making. Nixon was President
 
            at the artist’s first shovelful. Nixon was President.
            Sleep Lake County, Nevada, was a blip
 
on the map—barren, sleepy, sheepy—a blip!
A man could make his mark there. To hell
 
            with gallery openings, we’re talking memorable—Hell!
            the Sphinx, Stonehenge—not Insta-fame, 
 
a lifetime of hauling—nothing like Insta-fame!
and this, before drones’ bird’s eye view.
 
            Heizer winged skyward in dreams to view
            how the earth beneath suggested both womb and grave.
 
His City suggests both space-dock and grave,
a backdrop for human fragility and outsized ambition. 
 
            You envy his moxy, his monstrous and mounded ambition.
            Only from the air does the layout resolve into elegance,
 
says a reporter. An elegant glyph, no less. Elegance
you can see from space. No giftshops. No bathrooms. You walk
 
            the whole damn thing for miles. You walk--
            forced to think big, monolithic, slow.

Devon Balwit

NB: The title and italicised portions of this poem are taken from Michael Kimmelman's article on the City in the New York Times. Click here to read.

Devon Balwit walks in all weather. Her most recent collections are Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats [Seven Kitchens Press 2020] and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang [Nixes Mate Books, 2021]. https://pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet