Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): "Central Pennsylvania"

I.
The stern wall of nothing written haunted even halcyon
days in State College. A solitary hike up Kilimanjaro:
apprentice to no one specifically. A young life, its sense
of value, at stake again. Each time I’d complete a piece,
I’d think this is the one, and be wrong. Destiny would
either impinge or not; some errant Muse, moving
gracefully in some universe bardo, would emerge,
genie-from-the-bottle like, or all the other mountains,
Jennifer, Carrie, the Outlaws, Rimbaud, would fade
disgracefully from view. The bedsit flat I had closed
in on me: early ’98. Some errant Muse, I later, myself,
mused, did come to the rescue. I wrote & wrote then,
until Kilimanjaro, scaled, revealed its mysteries, like
(I later learned) Mont Blanc and Snowdon. I got saved.

II.
Sublet dynasty: West Nittany emerged after
South Atherton. Daily, I surveyed my papers,
which for me were drenched in the ecstasy of tears,
terror, & tremors transcended. Plays were staged,
Outlaws-style. No longer inchoate, I felt charmed.
I charted Central Pennsylvania as a mighty mind—
a million shades of green. For a few months, this
college town was representatively, legitimately my
possession. I consumed College Ave. as though it
were nitrous, my diploma made of universe., or the heaven
of poetry’s gravel-paths. Shifting winds would have to
take me elsewhere. Yet much of me, I sensed, must
remain in this place the breakthrough occurred, could
never change. Nature’s way. The final autumn here the first May.

© Adam Fieled 2022-2025