clever animal

On the one hand are warm fingers with a fine light of moisture glistening in the crosswise cracks, fine shades of age in the lengthwise wrinkles that belong to you or to someone whom you know and whom you now touch -- or if you wish, throw in the finger of a chief petty officer I once knew who lost it to a buzz saw and then to his dog, who picked it up and disappeared with it, clever animal. On the other hand are bones and nerves, chemical compositions, exactly connected to spine and brain in relations that can be diagrammed and formulated with a clarity like that of topographical isobars on an ordinance survey map or of a coordinated grid containing an analysis of stresses. These are measures destined also for our contemplation.

Joseph McElroy, "Neural Neighborhoods and Other Concrete Abstracts (1974)"