Another chip in the white enameled sink, only three years old. How
I've tried to keep it pristine, and yet—
stainless steel pots scrape it till the black
cast iron breaks through. What's below a surface gloss. Now the flesh
on my hands has grown so thin
the layers underneath show through,
rivery veins and knobby metacarpals. Knuckles like pebbles—like
rocks. I've bordered my rose beds
with stones from Blanco Creek. How long
did it take to shape those irregular rounds and ovals? Our house, built
of blocks mined from the quarry only
five miles up the road—limestone
formed in the Paleozoic Era. My favorite paperweight: a fossilized
clam I found in the backyard, remains
from the time the land around us
lived under ocean. Something so pocked, wizened, holding my papers
in place. Arriving at the Grand Canyon,
we've all peered down at those
dozens of rock layers—granite, dolomite, sandstone, shale, basalt—
formed two million, maybe two billion
years ago. And who would want
to mend that great magenta-, purple-, blood-shaded rip in the earth's
surface? It's what we come for,
to gawk at all those layers, exposed.
Copyright © 2015 Wendy Barker. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review. Used with permission of the author.