After Seeing the Impressionist Group Exhibit In Kansas City, We Drive Back Through Flatness to Wichita
Goldbarth notes his observations regarding the art in Kansas City. He is drawn to the literary elements of the visual art he's seen. Monet, he believes, paints the equivalent of exclamation points. Degas uses commas a bunch. And Modigliani uses sex in a cyclical pattern. As he drives home, Goldbarth realizes that even nature itself -- in the farmlands of Kansas -- can be interpreted grammatically, as symbols.
Again
In witnessing his father's death, Goldbarth remembers how dark death seemed. He found himself continuously repeating the same petition to God to spare his father's life. In this repetition, Goldbarth is reminded of how religious tokens have been mass produced and believed, through their sheer numbers, to bring about healing. He tells the story of a dying sailer leaving his final thoughts in a note in a bottle. Although Goldbarth has witness his father's death, he refuses to end the story there, insisting, instead, that there must be a bottle drifting somewhere.
Alveoli
Upon learning the extreme compaction of alveoli -- which are very long -- in the human lungs, Goldbarth wonders why people need visual comparison in order to understand units of measurement like length. He considers how these facts are equally as incomprehensible as imagining how real people accomplished massive feats, like building The Great Wall of China or creating the art hanging in the Louvre.
And the Rustling Bough as An Alphabet
In this poem Goldbarth interprets the wind in its various manifestations of strength and gentleness as a type of braille for the hand of God, by which he maintains his dominion.
