This work was the very first in an intended 50 plate series.
Eventually much of the art took leave of the opening text.
Absence
With no reaching cry, sodium song,
as if surveying
coast
a seagull
turns on the afternoon breeze
circling lower
before moving on
not a wave, breaker
under piercing attack-
the ocean littoral
lonely summer.
On each briar rose, a bare
shore sunlight. I know
it is fine in the salt garden
where you no longer walk.