...straight: telephone poles grain elevators church steeples. Vanish, suddenly: the gopher was the model. How do you grow a past/ to live in the absence of...absence of Lord Nelson the absence of kings and queens the absence of a bottle opener, and me with a vicious attack of the 26 -ounce flu the absence of both...

...for an ongoing articulation of self. In his long poem Seed Catalogue, the poet Robert Kroetsch asks, 'How do you grow a past / to live in / the absence of silkworms' (11-12) , and he goes on to detail all the other absences that challenge the Prairie writer's ability...