“It’s no metaphor to feel the influence of the dead in the world, just as it’s no metaphor to hear the radiocarbon chronometer, the Geiger counter amplifying the faint breathing of rock, fifty thousand years old. (Like the faint thump from behind the womb wall.) It’s no metaphor to witness the astonishing fidelity of minerals magnetized, even after hundreds of millions of years, pointing to the magnetic pole, minerals that have never forgotten magma whose cooling off has left them forever desirous. We long for place; but place itself longs. Human memory is encoded in air currents and river sediment.” Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

"Try to be buried in ground that will remember you."
from Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

"I see that I must give what I most need."
from Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

"That I'm looking for something I can't find
makes me strangely satisfied.
It fills me with time."
from the poem Modersohn-Becker by Anne Michaels