Archimedes
Bent over the plate, she studies
the tremor in the hand that
holds the fork that
lifts the food that,
when it’s lifted, trembling,
spills back to the plate.
Head down, puzzling it out,
she doesn’t see
and while she doesn’t
maybe isn’t there
in the lunch room hearing
the linoleum echo
of the half words and
disconnected phrases
others at the table
say to no one
in response to nothing.
She could be pondering how wide
the gulf is between
tine and tongue, and cup and lip,
or why it is the hand won’t
hear her, won’t listen, is it
deaf, or stubborn,
a stubborn brat holding its breath
and shaking till it gets its way
though it won’t tell her
what its way is,
what it wants from her.
And as she stares it down
as if by staring she might
shame it into being hers again,
or untangle the knotted
up enigma
of how the present had been
always only present
even while it carried her
from house to cottage to
apartment to
this linoleum-echo
of disconnection
in a lunch room
of strangers in a home
that isn’t
with a hand that won’t
stop shaking from the fork
whatever food is
being lifted to her mouth.
