You are the stick you throw under the footbridge
To watch it emerge on the other side
Shall we call those navigators victims
As if it were possible otherwise than to float and flow

The skin toughens in the region of contact
The cellist’s fingertips
The elder’s feet after decades of shoes
The child’s knees after the falls of play

You are the knee the finger the battered brain
The organic matter that floats downstream
Whose significant features come out involuntarily
Shaped by the currents of the world