Constructing the Visible World
You can tell there’s ice in patches on the lakeonly because the gulls are standing on it,each on one leg to maintain body-warmth,each facing into the wind as always.Knowing it’s there you can see the icepresenting a different surface to the airlike the skin on your mug of boiled milkthat you blew into wrinkles then hooked outwith a fingertip or a crust to eat like cream.
You can tell what trees and bushes grow hereonly if you see their leaves or berriesunder them on the frost-hard ground.Out-of-season furniture, they’ve beendust-covered by honeysuckle vines,smothered into uniform hillocks of scribbleslike the Seven Sleepers hidden in their hair,or Sleeping Beauty’s castle and landsovergrown with briar roses and brambles.
You can tell what’s happened on this landonly if you can read the signs embeddedin its placid grassy face: the glacier boulderspushed to its downslope edge by backhoes;the faded pasture fence markingboundaries once made stock-proofby hedges of osage orange; the trailbetween the last two mansions to go up,where fox scat still appears from time to time.
You can tell there’s ice in patches on the lakeonly because the gulls are standing on it,each on one leg to maintain body-warmth,each facing into the wind as always.Knowing it’s there you can see the icepresenting a different surface to the airlike the skin on your mug of boiled milkthat you blew into wrinkles then hooked outwith a fingertip or a crust to eat like cream.
You can tell what trees and bushes grow hereonly if you see their leaves or berriesunder them on the frost-hard ground.Out-of-season furniture, they’ve beendust-covered by honeysuckle vines,smothered into uniform hillocks of scribbleslike the Seven Sleepers hidden in their hair,or Sleeping Beauty’s castle and landsovergrown with briar roses and brambles.
You can tell what’s happened on this landonly if you can read the signs embeddedin its placid grassy face: the glacier boulderspushed to its downslope edge by backhoes;the faded pasture fence markingboundaries once made stock-proofby hedges of osage orange; the trailbetween the last two mansions to go up,where fox scat still appears from time to time.
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