Double Shadow

This museum wall
is humming:

covered in threaded
squiggles and polka

dots, grids, rain drops,
plaid, pattern upon

pattern thrumming
and pulsing, flowers

and foliage that look
pluckable, leaves

my teeth want to tear
into. They vibrate,

gravitational, as if
they’ve tied themselves

into shapes yearning
to transform.

Hundreds of images
bursting into clusters—

they levitate,
become orbital–

there’s a space between
wall and thread.

But it is filling up
with my own dark

and tangled questions,
the things I persist

in holding. Later,
on a walk before bed,

my daughter hunches
over an upended nest

filled with tuft
and string, stems

and cigarette butts.
I crouch down

and peer over her shoulder,
our shadows suddenly one.

– Jenny Berkel