Arthur Sze

Doppler Effect
June 12, 2014 Sze Arthur

Doppler Effect

 

Stopped in cars, we are waiting to accelerate

along different trajectories. I catch the rising

 

pitch of a train—today one hundred nine people

died in a stampede converging at a bridge;

 

radioactive water trickles underground

toward the Pacific Ocean; nickel and copper

 

particulates contaminate the Brocade River.

Will this planet sustain ten billion people?

 

Ah, switch it: a spider plant leans toward

a glass door, and six offshoots dangle from it;

 

the more I fingered the clay slab into a bowl,

the more misshapen it became; though I have

 

botched this, bungled that, the errancies

reveal it would not be better if things happened

 

just as I wished; a puffer fish inflates on deck;

a burst of burnt rubber rises from pavement.

Arthur Sze’s tenth book of poetry, Sight Lines (Copper Canyon, 2019), won the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.