PART 1
THE SHADOW BEFORE
“They begin!
The perfections are sharpened
The flower spreads its colored petals
wide in the sun
But the tongue of the bee
misses them
They sink back into the loam
crying out
—you may call it a cry
that creeps over them, a shiver
as they wilt and disappear. . . .” —William Carlos Williams, Paterson
“Born down in a dead man’s town.” —Bruce Springsteen