Quiet Art
for my mother
We are joined by ink and glue
on the hands.
Dabbed with ceremony.
Our long fingers lift and frame.
We close an eye
and the picture plane flattens,
lets a single form rise.
Now in bent-neck light, we live
in the birdhouse. In its dangle.
We are quiet. The birdhouse
sways, and from our room,
appears as a golden door
inside the trees.
Rachel Cloud Adams is a writer, editor, and artist from Baltimore, Maryland. She is the founder/editor of the journal Lines + Stars and the editor for a nonprofit advocacy association. Her work has appeared in The North American Review, The Hopkins Review, Cagibi, Carousel, Memoir, and elsewhere; her full-length collection The Resting Mound, the Field, and the Wheel is forthcoming from White Stag in 2027.