Michele Parker Randall is the author of Museum of Everyday Life (Kelsay Books 2015). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “An Explanation of Sort… — Michele Parker Randall is the author of *Museum of Everyday Life* (Kelsay Books 2015). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in *Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review,* and elsewhere. Her poem “An Explanation of Sorts” appears in the Fall 2019 *Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.*

"Backstroke is my strength, I tell myself, pulling "

I am struck by those first eight words—the start of a sentence, but the beginning of a story, too—in Susan Sample’s poem “Indigo” (Spring 2014 Intima). The speaker’s story, her father’s. Propelled forward by sounds and ideas, the ownership of a strength intrigues me.

Floridian by birth, I can’t remember a time I didn’t swim—but I prefer a slow crawl. Swimming, oars pulling, dripping IV lines. Water rhythms create music through their image, sound, and texture-memory. We know what it feels like to swim, the pleasure of being pulled through water by the mechanics of the human body. A soft resistance.

We also know what happens when the machine breaks down. And when Sample’s poem switches to the sound of another machine—dispensing medicine drop by drop by drop—all our senses sing with that dripping. Sight rhythms—strips of black on the floor, lines and ports, a blue bowl rocked back and forth—remind me to check my own surroundings.

How do we space art on the walls? Where do I place a throw pillow? How many citrus trees do I really need in my yard? Nature runs to its own rhythms, like the cars passing outside my window, the swish of the wind pushing one treetop closer to another, the occasional Tckk—tchhkk of the door down the hall opening and closing. Some days I try to guess who is arriving by the pattern of their walk. My dog is extraordinarily good at this; I am not, but today I listen, still. The clicking of the ceiling fan, the hum of the air conditioner. I find balance in which books are vertical with ones I lay flat. I’m grateful for “Indigo,” for the careful braiding of sound and narrative, for the “weighted bowl” of the father’s story, and for author’s willingness to share all of it with us.

Michele Parker Randall is the author of Museum of Everyday Life (Kelsay Books 2015). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Stetson University.