3rd Prize winner of the 2017 Occasional Geist Erasure Contest, announced in Geist 108. Erasure poetry begins with an existing piece of text. Letters, words and punctuation are removed—or erased. What is left behind is a new stand-alone poem, one that both complements and gives new meaning to the Erasure Text. The Erasure Text for the 2017 Geist Erasure Poetry Contest is an excerpt from Wacousta by John Richardson, one of the oldest Canadian novels.

ANTHROPOCENE I

Knowledge is the silken object

we adore. When, however, we lose

sight of the original, we lament,

dear, that the world should leave so

dispassionately! It is then that nature

feels empty; and we follow,

ashamed—divested of this earth,

mere creatures look back with regret