Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.




"Keeping Things Whole" from Selected Poems by Mark Strand. Copyright © 1979, 1980. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.