Motion Sickness
There is a woman in Munich
whose damaged brain knows life
as a sequence of still photographs
changing stroboscopically – a cup overflows
while the just tipped teapot lingers
in her mind; distant cars
at the end of the street
suddenly are upon her – edges
of overlapping instants
no longer fit together:
It’s all a fractured dream
– as it must be
for those in boxcars
who left their homes
only a moment ago.
Harvey Shepard is a professor emeritus of physics
at the University of New Hampshire.