Summer 2016: Poetry
Laws of Physics
by Andrea Hollander
First from the porch, then the driveway,
I shouted your name, its single syllable
a stone I believed I could heave
far enough to stop you
as you walked and walked
with that purposeful slowness
I’d come to recognize, your back
a shield against my voice.
At the end of the block
I thought you’d stopped
like that ocean wave in the footage
we’d seen together on TV,
where we learned that a wave
at its pinnacle pauses
just before it breaks,
just before the wall
it has become
swallows the shore, the houses,
and of course the people,
no matter how fast they run.
A stone is denser than water
and I hurled it at your back.
Didn’t I understand
the simplest laws of physics?
Throw a stone at a wave —
at its apex when it looks
most fierce — and the stone
will pass right through.
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