#MIDDLEBURY
Dragged Mass
Rick Barot
What are we supposed to make
of the granite block dragged across the dirt lot
behind a tractor that has been instructed
to build up a mound out of the displaced dirt, a mess
far away from what we would call the aesthetic
and more to do with the disturbance
of fresh graves or construction, the rock
so enormous it seems more conceptual than actual,
the way large things tend to be, the way scale
is a kind of assertion, the larger
the louder, and the smaller heartbreaking,
so that we want to imagine the theatrics of the dirt lot
back to the artist’s hand on paper,
the artist trying to transform desire into vision,
or a representation of something
like vision, one that makes us see the granite
and the hurt earth as images of the body, of gravity,
of what time does to the body,
which is to scour it, which must have something to do
with why I am looking at you now, asleep
among blue sheets as though it is any morning,
in winter light, in the light of the eye.
About this poem
“This poem is part of a set of poems responding to three works by the artist Michael Heizer: ‘Dragged Mass’; ‘Adjacent, Against, Upon’; and ‘Levitated Mass.'” – Rick Barote
About Rick Barot
Rick Barot is the author of “Chord” (Sarabande Books, 2015). He teaches at Pacific Lutheran University and lives in Tacoma, Wash.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Rick Barot. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
