The Earth Is Not Flat

Self-Portrait As Erasure

104 Self-Portrait as Erasure 1. It is, after all, just What happens. Whether by time Or light. By quirk or snowfall or the slow Hand of wind over a surface: sand, Water, even stone goes by. A feather Flips over and flies. It is what Happens to you, love, when I go To sleep—and to me, I assume, when you Sink to where we cannot keep Each other, becoming as we do absentMinded . Waking to find you, I recall What I must lose. Sometimes, Talking, I look in your eyes and see Every word vanishing. No Matter. Let me tell you about that day Chasing after humpbacks, our tiny Boat fast-dancing in chop and wind, until Alex killed the engine. We rose and fell, 105 Drifting on the swells. Chris, snap-snapping His giant telephoto lens, shot a whale Fluking in the distance, a whale Bigger, closer, more focused, in every way More present than our eyes Could see. Later, over dinner, we looked And looked. On video, what I got Was not the whale’s sudden surfacing Right beside the boat, but its breathy Spume, and, between me and it, Eddy Doing his little jig of surprise. What I see Now in my mind’s eye: that fluke, lifted And stilled forever against water And snow, looming so close We might touch it; Eddy letting his joy Move him. I tell you, I can smell The whale’s sigh even now, its whoosh Of fish and heat. Why hold on to whatever 106 Really happened, when Memory writes over every bit. 2. what happens surface flies sink as I do what I must lose vanishing we chased closer look what I got little jig mind’s eye move sigh hold on ...