Law of Gravity

I prefer walks with a decided destination, and I fear the scrutiny of reunions, so each turn of a corner presented an ambivalent moment. Crossing a market square, I encountered a juggler, a lanky, youngish man with a baseball cap upturned on the cobblestones and holding enough silver to buy a pint. He began with oranges, but as a crowd trickled around, he switched to bowling pins. Their arcs made a more entrancing show, and their apparent weight suggested greater skill. Tourists, bypassing executives, idle teenagers, and me, we all waited, as another and another pin were added, for the collapse that always seemed imminent. But he knew what we wanted. With six pins twirling in a blurred oval, he halted them one by one until none were aloft, none dropped. The next corner I took appeared less formidable than those heretofore, and the next I have never, will never take.

 

Inheritance

What will we name our ancestors? The christening is tomorrow; a bespoke gown hangs in the closet. Their self-chosen names lie as loosely on their bones as the dresses and suits they were buried in. They can hardly balk, but it is not their mouths we fear. Do you see my son there, six months old? He learns as he watches. Even now he is considering what he can call me.

 

Copyright © Carrie Etter, 2006.

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Carrie Etter, an American expatriate, now makes her home in Bradford on Avon. She teaches for Bath Spa University and The Poetry School, and her poems have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in New Writing 14 (Granta, 2006), Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto, Tenth Muse, and TLS. Her blog is here.