Meditation

Picture where the shoe
leaves the pavement. Is it
here? or here? or here? Look,

the foot has gone a ways,
and the leg along
with it; see the knee

unbend, the leg extend
like a wing unfurling
over the concrete.

Any step now, she might
unstep, take the sparrow’s
lot, and bound by the law

of levity, rise over
the dappled shadows crowning
the courtyard like a maze,

swift as the sun arcing
its daily way over
the waters, she steps, she steps,

each step a steady
pendulum into the next,
every rise and fall

a stretched shadow, taut
as the waking sunlight of
another vanishing day. 

“Avenue of Poplars in Autumn” by Van Gogh

Anne-Sophie Olsen is a student at Cornell University and Editor in Chief of Fragments. She enjoys a crushingly strong cup of coffee.