For the Sake of Retrieval (audio only)
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The Fish
". . . tomorrow I look forward to a greater harvest."
—Charles Darwin, 1832
Month after dry month, then suddenly
a brief rain has delivered to the fractured hillsides
a haze of grass. So sparse it might be
a figment of the heart. Yet its path
on the outstretched hand is true—brush and retreat—
like the breaths of a spaniel.
There are buried in the decks of certain ships
melon-sized prisms of glass, dangling their apices
to the cabins below.1994
Incomplete Lioness
—National Gallery, London
Or lion. Too little marble left for certainty:
affixed to a bone-like armature, just a flank
and scored shoulder, and far down the missing,
crouching shape, a single, splay-toed paw.
The companion, or mate, is better formed
and offers a template to trace a bit, image to absence
to memory, until the lioness fills.
The exhibit is Fragments and Dislocations:
Sight and Sightlessness. Across the room
2013
Lunar Eclipse
Mt. Rainier National Park
2016