The Girl as Weather
April 9, 2014She is bending trees to the angle of her back. She is the crest of a tidal wave breathing everything a mile out from the shore, growing a mile high….
She is bending trees to the angle of her back.
She is the crest of a tidal wave
breathing everything a mile out from the shore,
growing a mile high.
Fish flopping over in silt.
She floats, a salted cloud, head first into stone.
She sees me, a bird who does not understand compassion
or the idea of falling down.
It is nothingness she falls through.
I am the nothingness she falls through.
The point of impact. The end
always darker than the beginning.
-Jim Walker (Marion County)
Jim Walker is an Indianapolis-based writer and artist who works as executive director of of the nonprofit arts organization, Big Car Collaborative. Walker — whose poetry has been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Cream City Review, pLopLop, and Hanging Loose — has an MFA from Warren Wilson College.
Indiana Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month by sharing a poem from an Indiana poet every day in April (hand-selected by Indiana Poet Laureate George Kalamaras). Check in daily to see who is featured next!
