I.
 
The sun has turned intense,
as if gathering colour
by the hour, strewing
its crooked stream,
falling here and not there,
attending to the flickering
of some blades and not others,
falling, finally, across the black roots
of the tree laid parallel,
as if slicing through
the insufficiency of the line,
the humility of this invention.
 
            II.
 
Gradually, the last hurrah of light weakens:
shadows replenish the field.
 
And here we are, tending
to the evening's marginalia,
the image secondhand, inferred.
 
            III.
 
The body on the table,
the click of the furnace screen.
 
Next day, the picture finally up on the wall,
the involuntary substitution. Memory
 
is a kind of settling
for which, I realise now,
 
we have been preparing all along,
all these lines of preparation.