Ways of Seeing

You see a pile of logs, a bend
in the river, driftwood to collect.
I look for human limbs
in the branches.
You admire the view
from the Second Street bridge.
I calculate how far the drop is,
if it would hurt, and what happens
when, halfway down, a person
changes her mind.
At the beach you collect sea
shells, search for shark teeth,
and I wonder if I swam out
’til I was too tired to swim back,
would it be like going to sleep?

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Sonja de Vries is a filmmaker and poet living on a farm outside Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated from Spalding’s MFA program and hopes to teach poetry and creative writing in the near future.