Out my mother's Mazda
window tinsel flecked
blades spun
CD speeds.
I didn't know a laser reads
by touching the grooves
inside the disk.
I didn't know you could
hanker like this for anything, let alone
a 50 cent pinwheel.
Still in the shrieking plastic
she taught patience
for the madness
that calibrates the brain
to keener signals—
the pinwheel just ripped off in the wind
from a semi and went glinting
like an oil slick
among the overpasses, as laughable
as it was human readable
down to every last rainbow in it.