203 - Under the Common Skin

Under the Common Skin
By Joseph Garrison

A child is holding up two fingers.
They are grown together, webbed,

two bones under the common skin.
She is gathering flattened rocks

beside the fence where the borers
work. I study her, and she waves

as if from the other side of grand.
stands. When she runs to me, bringing

what she has, I see the same veins
I have seen in the grey eyes

of an old man nearly blind and deaf,
walking with a brace of dogs

unsteadily through an intersection;
he too waves at whatever is there.

She puts rocks in my hands, counts
my fingers, smiles, and returns

to the fence, looking at her other
hand, the right one. Little child,

you of the dark event in the womb,
you're almost exactly like us,

like the old man and me, our fists
holding onto the edges of things.

 

Joseph Garrison is a professor of literature at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. His poetry has appeared in many publications.