The Part Left Over By Linda Gregg
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It’s as though I were an event
on this mountain, not merely the evidence.
Plainness and heat.
Bleached grass all the way
to the fig tree and the sea silent
far below. Sound of a lizard
disappearing into darkness
between rocks. Memories and the dream.
Insect, thorns, no shade, shards.
The face of a man on a broken vase
listening to someone on a missing fragment.
No language for the part of me
left over. A clay piece of just the hand
of a woman, two fingers touching
the front of her draped garment.
The special beauty of what’s absent.
From “Things and Flesh: Poems,” by Linda Gregg (Graywolf Press: 82 pp., $14 paper)
