We count kilometers by Peterson’s profiles
and petal-falls; just as one toothed frond
disappears quickly into the gaping space
of the right-hand mirror, we look ahead
and identify another, sequential signs
in a revolving gallery, ordered and framed
in the memory. But for these signatures,
we would lose the object of our travels:
to savor the minutiae of distances and hours.
Copyright © 1999 by
Joyce Wilson.
To appear in Descant,
summer 1999.
