She thinks of many things in her preparation to write about infinity

 for Natalie Angier

by Grace Grafton

Small and white, hairs from her baby’s head,

she wants to keep them all but

they insist on escape. Clouds

eventually tatter and dissipate. To maintain

memory as though it were a finitude.

The snow keeps falling, it impedes

progress as it tidies up the landscape,

quashes color. Fabric of weather,

lessons of the implacable. She thinks

about bathwater, divisible drops subsumed

in the rushing sound, baby’s soap-slippery

foot, how gradually the baby will grasp

(drop by drop) the relationship of her bath

to falling snow, the rigorous and unknown

calculus her mom – thinking about infinity and

this precious finite entity – must live in.

* * * *

Grace Marie Grafton’s most recent book, Jester, was published by Hip Pocket Press. Six collections of her poetry have been published.  Her poems won first prize in the Soul Making contest (PEN women, San Francisco), in the annual Bellingham Review contest, and The National Women's Book Association, Honorable Mention from Anderbo and Sycamore Review, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Ms. Grafton has taught for decades with CA Poets in the Schools, and has been awarded twelve CA Arts Council grants for her teaching programs. Recent poems appear in Sin Fronteras, The Cortland Review, Canary, CA Quarterly, Askew, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Basalt and Mezzo Cammin.