Abstraction

         miscarriage 9/24/2021

A cheap print of an aspen grove
In the exam room — it’s not bad,
Cross-lines of bark, long straight lines for the trunks,
Brown and black and gold in the foreground,
Receding to white in the back — the farthest trees, then,
Just a line or two, a white line suggesting
The whole tree.
If I were teaching, say, a child, say
You, I could tell you that it’s called
Abstraction, the line suggests the tree but isn’t,
See the shapes the lines make in your head and it’s a tree
But also isn’t, faint and fainter. But if
You and I were in a forest, if we were in a birch forest in the snow,
Then it’d be a tree and still a tree, a real tree, even if it was so far away we couldn’t see it,
So far so white against the terrible white cold, a tree, a real tree
Just so small and white against the snow it disappeared.