CERTIFIED COPY SERIN LEE (AB’21)
Between the dog and the wolf, something darkening
To bank one’s wings on shelter is to run from one’s own shadow. Birds above and below go to the races, submerged nearly in the dreadscape of dying cows. What is it that happens in the unfinished photograph? The seaside, but something denser, more curatorial. Its window, washed ashore, is already too inundated to offer a generous view. Still, from its dim glass emerges Normandy and brine, each threading light through all that ice. In the distance, thunder and years of dueling remember only public faults. Arriving on their shores are men who remember only the child’s giddy dream, and the sober hereafter. In them, it is always raining. Perhaps they could be domesticated, but how then could the actor ever be his character? They are the peopled difference between memory and desire, as they err softly down the foothills. Meanwhile, illogical snow gathers itself around the earth, waiting on the ordinary to unfold.
Recurring symptoms begin when chance is displaced in snow
Memories of a sparely painted gunshot. The birds are unwieldy—respond only with their scattering. In the background, a howl. Closer, the hound. The hunter is less concerned this time of year, and wonders at the meaning of such an expanse—of voices crying when snow disrupts a scene. How can the actor ever be his character? The deer wonder, too, but leave no tracks of their inquiry. A crowd still parting. The horses, marbling themselves, break against continuum and hold stubbornly to the foreground. They are bracing for the third snow, and want only quiet with which to pad their hooves. Let the fulminating day forgive them as they catch up to the ecology of winter—breath, too, catching on the storm when birds are willed once more into movement. 8
