The Lost Colony (audio only)
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You should lie down now and remember the forest, for it is disappearing-- no, the truth is it is gone now and so what details you can bring back might have a kind of life. Not the one you had hoped for, but a life --you should lie down now and remember the forest-- nonetheless, you might call it "in the forest," no the truth is, it is gone now, starting somewhere near the beginning, that edge, Or instead the first layer, the place you remember (not the one you had hoped for, but a life) as if it were firm, underfoot, for that place is a sea, nonetheless, you might call it
1995
Your eye moving
left to right across
the plowed lines
looking to touch down
on the first
shoots coming up
like a frieze
from the dark where
pale roots
and wood-lice gorge
2015
As from dark orchard leaves, from quiet scripts
where each shape sends its tendril reaching—
circle and line, the swaddled bud, the petiole
sprung, an envelope tendered.
By a window, the infant
turns, rooting
toward the breast,
sun-lit,
the mother humming.
(Those far things, sources
of power and
regret,
cliffs and waves,
continue
at a distance.)
Here you’ll find
a name scrawled in the bark—
last words, left to chance
and strangers.
There, the black ant, burdened
by a crumb, and the weight
of her lacquered armor,
cross2017