The intricacy of the thing we’re stumbling over, sawing to pieces, digging up and flooding, or draining; the harmony of what existed in the Rockies, before we got hold of the piano.

—Rick Bass, The Book of Yaak

I made the phone call then, and a kind man

came with his rope and harness. I paid him

to take it in his truck to sink to earth

in the Camden dump. That was August:

it will rot in winter.

—Joan Larkin, “No One Wants Them”