Small Imponderables

by Priscilla Frake

The tiny things of this world—
crumbs, electrons, spiders
(the ones whose legs are thin
as hair, the small black kind
that jump) as well as specks
of dust, fine needles fallen out
of their thread, a hitchhiking
seed, caught in the groove of a shoe,
the neutrino—

                            Are they too small
for gravity? You can never find them
because they have jumped
sideways—

                            like the spider,
or like the valence electron—
and become mere probability,
a scintilla of possible spiders—
never where you expect them.
And there are days like this,
and moods. Sometimes
whole feelings vanish, too small
to be seen—

                            only to reappear
 and shake every foundation.

Priscilla Frake is the author of Correspondence, a book of epistolary poems. She has recent work in Poetry in Plain Sight, The Two River View, Equinox Journal, and Plant Human Quarterly, among others. Her honors include the Lorene Pouncey Award at the Houston Poetry Festival and a Pushcart nomination.