Not a Wall

Embedded in the ceiling
Above the horizontal
Radiation location,

A large landscape photograph,
Backlit, of a moody day,
Wildflowers in the foreground,

River gorge in the background,
Woods and a single farmhouse
In the middle distance, glows

As something for the patients
To look at from the table,
Something soothing, even though,

Day after day, the static
Picture gets pretty boring.
When the picture was taken,

Everything in that landscape—
Big clouds, black cliffs, woods, river—
Was all in constant motion,

Wavelengths and atoms tugging
In all directions at once,
While here they’re fixed, immobile,

Parallel to the table.
Still, the ink atoms tinting
The plastic go on swerving.