Bart Wilcox
Wing Chair
2025, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 24″ x 18”

I talk to my daughter in her
literal Idaho.
“What’s up how are the kids
how’s your health”
“Why go on in a
meaningless universe?”” is where we
dig in. Bridget completing a biological
anthropology degree after three decade’s sabbatical,
me struggling to work biological anthropology
into verse. Curiosity, she says.
Hers is like land without contour,
mountains sensed. Mine, like a chair,
in fact, not like a chair. A chair.
But with wings. It comes
and goes. We trade curiosities.
I am reading biological anthropology;
she is writing poetry. The benefit
of sharing DNA, swapping meaning.
I see her overhead.
Her curiosity flying over mine.
Flying my bird over her land.