Kathryn Weld

The Elusiveness of Being


No maelstrom –  just drizzle
and wind. The small warbler 

I found one morning splayed
on the flagstone, near a rotten

branch – tableau of broken
birch and wings. Mother's

whisk and bobbins confounded
in a single drawer, the frayed

edges of remade curtains,
lining stretched beyond

the seam, the hemline 
uneven. In the new room

the wall bulges proud 
of the trim line, the sill's 

not level, the door-jamb 
needs a shim and yet

the finished frame sits 
square to my eye and I see 

that every window trim's 
a fudge-job – an un-plumb 

miracle of tromp-l'oeil owed 
to block-plane and chisel, 

a spline curve fit to five 
points – sweet interpolation.


~



Kathryn Weld is a weaver, fern gardener, mathematician, occasional carpenter and poet. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Midwest Quarterly, Southeast Literary Review, Storyscape Literary Journal, and the Bellevue Literary Review. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sewanee School of Letters and her Ph.D in Mathematics at the Graduate Center of CUNY.



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