• Issues
  • Submissions
  • Contests
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction
  • Blog
  • About
  • Issues
  • Submissions
  • Contests
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction
  • Blog
  • About
Invisible City
MENU
You are here: Home / Poetry / Measure of a Life
Measure of a Life

Poetry

Measure of a Life

Let's say I throw the pebble and the pebble
is you 
	gray and irregular    slightly more  jagged
at one end than the other 
	   the ripples then in the pond are also     you 
	or you-shaped 	somewhat anyway   let's say
you-influenced 	at least at first 	
	that first one that pushes out the rest
		shoulders out the rest of the ripples
			surprising the face of the pond 	
				confusing the sky's calm reflection 
startling the fish beneath the surface just there 
topsy-turvying perhaps the water strider riding a sudden wave
			which is a sort of you or the inadvertent effect of
			being you 
	but you only exist anyway as a color in my eye
a coolness in my palm		in my nose the tang of you and
	air defines you as you fly
		water yields to you and speaks of you
on its surface and you become 		because of current over you
			and the whisper of the lips of fish whisking bits of weed
that have lingered on the curves and crevices of
		the thrown-into-the-pond you 
as any of us can't know our trajectory from one minute to the next
	from an object at rest to 	an object flying 	to 
a sinker to a sunk stone in a pond's cup 	remembered
	for a moment by some moving water now still

Marilyn McCabe’s poetry has won awards and contests through A Room of Her Own Foundation, The Word Works, Grayson Books, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. Her books of poems include Perpetual Motion and Glass Factory, and chapbooks Rugged Means of Grace and, most recently, Being Many Seeds. Poems and videopoetry have been published in print and online, and videopoems have appeared in festivals and galleries. She blogs about writing and reading at Owrite: marilynonaroll.wordpress.com.

Featured Artwork:

Rooftop Dancing

Sherry Shahan lives in a laid-back beach town in California where she grows carrot tops in ice cube trays for pesto. Her photography has appeared in national and international magazines, newspapers, and literary journals. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

You may also enjoy

Read More

  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction

Let’s Connect

  • Send us your work
  • Tweet @invisiblecitySF
  • invisiblecity@usfca.edu

University of San Francisco

  • Master of Fine Arts in Writing
  • Archive: Switchback Journal

Invisible City

Literary Journal of the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco

Note: The contents of Invisibe City do not necessarily reflect the views of USF or of the MFA program.

Privacy Policy

© 2020–2023