Weighted Graph
S. Brackett Robertson & Ursula Whitcher
If you trace out the path between us, can you stay?
When one friend knows three more, we spin a web,
but how strong are the links
when no one can breathe the same air?
You sent a mask printed with wings, feathered antennae,
spiders curled in rest. I hook the green cord around my ears.
Am I a resting node,
or a link made out of signs?
I send back to you postcards, felt, an entire birthday cake.
I wear your mask to the post office, to the beach.
The waves are flat. The moon tugs
lightly on this inland lake.
Are there nodes on this shore, currents flowing from this lake to the next?
I dip my toes in the frigid water, stand on smoothed rocks.
You stand on another lakeshore, another stretched horizon.
Each lake almost the size of a sea.
Where is the river joining your path to mine?
What kind of node is the moon behind a cloud?
How many can we reach
with twists of words?
It all seems so fragile, this network we’ve made
but maybe if we double back
weave more paths,
it’ll hold in a storm.
S. Brackett Robertson lives near many bodies of water. Brackett‘s work has previously appeared in Goblin Fruit, Mythic Delirium, Inkscrawl, and Stone Telling. Brackett enjoys museums and math and occasionally tweets at @sbrackettr.
Ursula Whitcher grew up beside a creek and now lives near a Great Lake.
Ursula’s poetry has also appeared in venues including The Cascadia
Subduction Zone, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, VoiceCatcher,
and Goblin Fruit. Ursula tweets as @superyarn and collects all sorts of
writing at www.yarntheory.net.