The Genius

by Sara Backer

She’s busy staring at a ragged alder leaf

backlit by setting sun: its complex

simplicity, fractals repeated in varying scale.

The word scale invites fish and symphonies.

She hears salmon muscling upstream and tastes

the cayenne of the xylophone

amid the low vibration of cello and bass.

She appears to be doing nothing, but only a brain

at rest allows patterns to reveal themselves,

the interface of world and mind its own sublimity.

On the brink of unlocking music and waves,

she is interrupted by people who want to pay her

to achieve something. Oh, the time

they force her to waste saying no, no, no.

* * * * *

"The Genius" was first published in Mithila Review (India).