The Part Left Over By Linda Gregg

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)