shape as surely as the patterns on the loom, to which the

woman had given too much importance, mistaking cloth for

flesh;

not the murderous fanfare of the mosquitoes, a visible

derangement, multiplying over the pond’s shallow water;

not the harp dropped into the pond and retrieved years later,

unstrung and warped beyond recognition, good only for the

fire, and not much good for that;

not that;

not a single sheet of paper, a letter whose words no matter how

rearranged are a dark glass held up before the world upon

which one can rap and rap and get no answer;

not that rapping;

none of it, no:

if you lie on the grass in the dead of summer, and sleep, your body

heavier than stone, and wake to the sound of something

tapping and tapping like a sculptor’s tool on stone, and look up

from your dream to see a sparrow hurtling like a missile past

the stone woman’s left breast, right where the arm would have

been,

so that it seems for a moment as if the sparrow has destroyed

the arm or been carried off by it,

but it is hard to tell, everything is so bright, the woman’s body

blinding against the trees, shining like snow just before dusk, or

soiled magnolias, or buttermilk, or aged opals, or darkened ice,

or the full moon, or arms submerged almost to the shoulders

in a tub of water dark as tea or in the steeping pond;

if you wake on the grass to see a sparrow part the waters of the

flesh you had forgotten, the milky flesh that pours back for a

moment after the bird passes—

then the absent arms are heavy;

the arms are so heavy;

not with the dropping down of living arms, falling loosely to the

side, a rest that contains within it the upward motion that will

follow, the fingers moving together to grasp and climb an

unseen rope in the deliberate haphazard way a vine might,

blossoming here and there, fingers and flowers making brief

bright points,

but with the heaviness of something at anchor:

the giant carp, say, grim gold, far gone, who has circled the pond’s

floor for years, lying at last taken on the grass, a creature so

pompous and ornate it looks more like a painted figurehead

than a fish, and so huge it seems to drag the foul pond it will

soon be returned to behind it like some ancient and beautiful

ship;

or heavy as a tapestry carried up from some dark crypt into the light

that will reveal—when the bristling cloth that smells of fox fur

and lilies is unrolled— the still golden image of a swooning

dove, its breast impaled by a silver cross;

or heavy as the bodies of twin deer, frozen in midflight, creatures

small and narrow as overbred dogs, and white as lamb’s wool,