Today's poem is by Megan Blankenship

Two Waters, One Money
        So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.
       
                Matthew 10:31

The Greeks were almost right about atoms but couldn't have known
        how deep the particular goes. Now we have nuclear, still yet
the quantum, each tinier bit requiring worldwide recalibration.

It hurts to do this every few years. For example: for stewed
        dandelion greens, my book advises, "boil in two waters."
Another thing I didn't know I was capable of.

One day, at the rural church fundraiser fish fry, the volunteer
        auctioneer hawks two identical picture frames
that come as a pair. Amid the gentle bleating garble I hear:

"Two pieces, one money." My sense-maker nearly chokes
        on a hush puppy. Closes one eye, then the other,
winking back and forth along an eyebrow rainbow,

a railroad crossing carrying on, blinking like it just woke up.
        Neither side clearer than the other. I forgot—
this is what the world is like every day for children:

words and numbers light as hummingbirds, never staying still,
        sipping from the twin invisible buttercups violence
and delight, assumptions just now solidifying into fact

liquefied by some new laser beam of evidence—
        I heard the other day that water moves in defiance
of accepted molecular theory! This is how it must have been for the girl

        slapping her own bare bottom in the babysitter's bathroom,
green-tiled and dim, when she knew she'd misbehaved, trying to hit hard
enough to appease justice, preempt the coming punishment.

Outside the temple where Jesus taught, sacrificial sparrows
        sold two for a cent—presumably twice as pleasing to God,
who would mete out twice the favor. Yet gas prices extend to three decimals!

Our division of time into seconds and minutes begins to look
        like a grade school worksheet, a fat pencil for little hands.
The Pythagoreans' entire world crumbled under irrational

numbers, and no wonder. A mathematics originally troubled:
        for every discrete measure of joy, some percentage particles
of sorrow. What we thought was prime turns out to be

divisible, what we thought divisible is prime.
        What we thought was justice—just a bargain. Paradigms
shift every day, or can, or should, but—hello out there!—

can you blame us for secretly hoping the buck stops at the quark,
        that all those turtles are really just fifteen or twenty that keep
jumping from the bottom to the top while your other

eye is closed, the way a sweaty playground huddle
        hand tower can go on into infinity if somebody doesn't call it,
declare a time-out to pull out her hand and ask,

        well, how many sparrows?

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Copyright © 2024 Megan Blankenship All rights reserved
from Southern Indiana Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission