Inflection Points

with Kathryn Ross

That tone, you know the one
Like the crack the whip leaves
Behind, splitting me,
Wooden palings over-
exposed to the sun
a potted plant in terracotta shards
riverbed that's forgotten how
the water runs

I was sunburned
in waiting rooms
The clatter of pen
and intercom, you know the tone
I was river number sixty-one
in the charts
the freckled geranium
in vinyl pot
craning down to watch

My eyes, this murky
river-brown
The pigment doesn't change
I have my mother's
my father's
the slow collision of sediment
The lenses shift
the world remains
though not
quite as I left it

It's in the tone, you know the one
The neck crack, knuckle crack
does no harm
just fluid in the bones
released
And the learning of grasping
and turning of the head
all new again
and altogether known
All changed
All much the same

Written with Kathryn Ross