every advance in visual representation
comes of a life form outside the hand
stored up in the energy of silent work
to see a new radix of the situation.

where does the willingness come from
to forfeit all the lines for the hidden core
where does the fortitude spring
to hold the heavy iron of no one's history?

there is a stump in the yard withered and cracked
at the bark-- more marble than wood.
look how even the sunlight slants off the cut!
never brought to the roots again.

fall against its smooth gray limbs
deep in the burn of memory,

the grain is a book flipped open
to every page at once, the sun.
drink this sweet filtered rainfall
of a hundred years of struggle.