I'm hoping it's going to rain. The cows have to eat next winter. The time spent figuring out connections, a constellation of shooting stars called incunabula, and dug for in the dirt . . . But we don't feed the birds, we attract them, fat as intangibles, to the glass part of our houses. Their songs cannot contain complaint, and a red that's more like strawberries than blood is a theme of my motion picture, whose symbols are shattered, whose moral is forget the birds above the battle you've recreated in your consciousness, and then forget that. The shepherd yields a real crook and everyone wonders about owning a neck, while her own is being, and the one that's fit. But that's not right. No one had to breathe a word, the black bird, was swallowed after light.
		Excerpted from Terrain Vague by Richard Meier. Copyright © 2001, Verse Press. Winner of the first annual Verse Prize, selected by Tomaz Salamun